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A HISTOET OF 

AMERICAN LITERATURE 

WITH A VIEW TO THE 

FUNDAMENTAL PRINCIPLES UNDERLYING 
ITS DEVELOPMENT 

A TEXT-BOOK FOE SCHOOLS AND COLLEGES 



BY 
FRED LEWIS PATTEE 

Professor of English and Eiibtoric in n 
Pennsylvania State College 




, ft- 

SILVER, BURDETT & COMPANY 
New York BOSTON Chicago 

1896 



Copyright, 1896, 
By SILVER, BURDETT & COMPANY. 



J. S. Cushing & Co. - Berwick & Smith 
Norwood Mass. U.S.A. 



PREFACE 



Tn the preparation of this history of the rise and 
development of American literature the author has had 
\Leaily in mind the limitations to which every text- 
ook on literature must be subject. Such a work can 
ue at best only directive. It can trace the influences 
of race, environment, and epoch, and indicate causes 
and results ; it can insist that the student follow the 
logical order, rejecting everything not worthy of his 
attention and emphasizing sufficiently the emphatic 
points ; it can furnish him with a plan for estimating 
the personality and influence of each individual author; 
but more it cannot do. No one ever learned literature 
from a text-book, not even when it was supplemented 
by copious extracts from the authors considered. Frag- 
ments of an author's writings, like fragments of any 
work of art, give only vague ideas of the whole. He 
who has studied merely " Thanatopsis " or "Evange- 
line " knows very little of Bryant or Longfellow. A 
knowledge of " Rip Van Winkle " provides the key to 
only a very small part of Irving's domain. Actual con- 
tact with all of the important writings of the leading 



IV PREFACE. 



authors is imperative if one would understand a litera- 
ture. The text-book that does not emphasize this and 
aim merely to guide the student and supplement his 
efforts is superfluous. The conning of names and dates, 
of details and characteristics, of criticisms of books that 
the pupil has never seen, if not supplemented by copious 
draughts from the living fountain heads, can but result 
in mental stagnation and a loathing of the entire sub- 
ject. 

Throughout this work the author has endeavored to 
follow the development of the American spirit and of 
American thought under the agencies of race, environ- 
ment, epoch, and personality. He hf,s recognized that 
the literature of a nation is closely entwined with its 
history, both civil and religious. As far as possible he 
has made the authors speak for themselves, and he has 
supplemented his own estimates by frequent criticisms 
from the highest authorities; but in presenting these 
criticisms he has not aimed to do the student's work for 
him, nor to furnish ready-made estimates for him to 
commit to memory without havL g examined the works 
criticised; but, rather, to provide information that 
should lead to an intelligent study of the author or 
book in hand. 

This book implies other books. It should not be 
taught without them. If the school library is deficient, 
tfiey may be had from some private or public collection. 
Some of the more important works, as those of Irving, 



PREFACE. V 

Bryant, Emerson, Longfellow, Whittier, Holmes, and 
the like, may surely be procured by any class. The 
amount of reading done must, necessarily, depend upon 
the length of the course and the nature of the class. 
The directions as to what books shall be read are 
largely suggestive. Much must be left to the judg- 
ment of the teacher, with whom, indeed, it rests 
whether the study shall be helpful and stimulating or 
dry and lifeless. 

The author gratefully acknowledges his obligations 
to Messrs. Houghton, Mifflin & Co., Messrs. G. P. Put- 
nam's Sons, Messrs. Flood & Vincent, and Messrs. 
Lee & Shepard, who ha^e permitted the use of ex- 
tracts from their copyrighted works, and to all others 
who have in any way aided in the preparation of the 

volume. 

F. L. P. 
State College, Pa., 
January, 1896. 



TABLE OF CONTENTS. 

[See general index at the end of the volume.] 

PAGE 

Books of Reference . . . . . . . x 

CHAPTER I. 
Introductory 1 

CHAPTER II. 
The First Colonial Period 7 

CHAPTER III. 

The Second Colonial Period ...... 38 

CHAPTER IV. 
Benjamin Franklin 53 

CHAPTER V. 
The Revolutionary Period 62 

CHAPTER VI. 
The Song and Romance of the Revolution . . 90 

CHAPTER VII. 
The First Creative Period 106 

CHAPTER VIH. 
Washington Irving 112 

vii 



Vlll CONTENTS. 

CHAPTER IX. 

PAGE 

The Novelists 134 

CHAPTER X. 
The Poets 154 

CHAPTER XI. 
Edgar Allan Poe . . 172 

CHAPTER XII. 
The Orators 183 

CHAPTER XIII. 
The Second Creative Period 195 

CHAPTER XIV. 
The Unitarian Leaders 204 

CHAPTER XV. 
The Transcendentalists (1) 208 

CHAPTER XVI. 
The Transcendentalists (2) 221 

CHAPTER XVII. 
The Transcendentalists (3) 228 

CHAPTER XVIII. 
Nathaniel Hawthorne 240 

CHAPTER XIX. 
The Cambridge Poets (1) . . . , . . 257 



CONTENTS. ix 

CHAPTER XX. 

PAGE 

The Cambridge Poets (2) 274 

CHAPTER XXI. 
The Cambridge Poets (3) 288 

CHAPTER XXII. 
The Historians 303 

CHAPTER XXIII. 
The Antislavery Leaders . . . . . . 324 

CHAPTER XXIY. 
The Diffusive Period . 345 

CHAPTER XXV. 
The Later Poets (1) 351 

CHAPTER XXVI. 
The Later Poets (2) .... „ . 376 

CHAPTER XXVII. 

Poets of the South and West ..... 385 

CHAPTER XXVIII. 
Woman in Literature 402 

CHAPTER XXIX. 
The Later Novelists 422 

CHAPTER XXX. 
The Humorists 448 



BOOKS OF REFERENCE. 



UNITED STATES HISTORY. 

Bancroft's History of the United States, 1492-1789. 

Hildreth's History of the United States, 1492-1820. 

Cooke's Virginia. 

Fiske's Beginnings of New England. 

Parkman's France and England in North America. 

Fiske's American Revolution. 

Fiske's Critical Period of American History, 1783-1789. 

Schouler's History of the United States, 1783-1861. 

MacMaster's History of the People of the United States, 1783-1861. 

Adams' History of the United States, 1801-1817. 

Benton's Thirty Years' View,. 1820-1850. 

Drake's Making of the Great West. 

Roosevelt's Winning of the West. 

Greeley's American Conflict. 

Davis' Rise and Fall of the Confederacy. 

Nicolay and Hay's Abraham Lincoln. 

Blaine's Twenty Years in Congress, 1862-1882. 

Andrews' History of Our Own Day, 1869-1895. 

LITERARY HISTORY AND CRITICISM. 

Welsh's English Literature and Language. 

Taine's English Literature. 

Tyler's American Literature. 

Richardson's American Literature. 

Stedman's Poets of America. 

Whipple's American Literature, Essays and Reviews. 

Nichol's American Literature. 

Beers' Outline Sketch of American Literature. 

White's Philosophy of American Literature. 

Curtis' Literary and Social Essays. 

Higginson's Short Studies of American Authors. 



BOOKS OF REFERENCE. x l 

Lowell's A Fable for Critics, Among My Books. 

Whittier's Literary Recreations. 

Haweis' American Humorists. 

Julian Hawthorne's Confessions and Criticisms. 

Stewart's Evenings in a Library. 

Deshler's Afternoons with the Poets. 

Scudder's Men and Letters. 

Vedder's American Writers of To-day. 

Tappan's Topical Notes on American Authors. 

BIOGRAPHY. 

Warner, Editor, American Men of Letters Series. 

Morse, Editor, American Statesman Series. 

Whipple's Recollections of Eminent Men. 

Curtis' Homes of American Authors. 

S. K. Bolton's Famous American Authors. 

Franklin's Autobiography completed by Bigelow. 

Irving's Life of Washington. 

Tyler's Three Men of Letters. 

Irving's Life of Irving. 

Godwin's Life of Bryant. 

Cabot's Life of Emerson! 

Hawthorne's Nathaniel Hawthorne and his Wife. 

Longfellow's Life of Longfellow. 

Pickard's Life of Whittier. 

Morse's Life of Holmes. 

GENERAL AUTHORITIES AND COLLECTIONS. 

Stedman and Hutchinson's Library of American Literature. 

Poole's Index to Magazine Literature. 

Appleton's Cyclopaedia of Biography. 

Allibone's Dictionary of Authors. 

Adams' Handbook of American Authors. 

Smith's Synopsis of English and American Literature. 

Beers' Century of American Literature. 

Cleveland's Handbook of American Literature. 

Underwood's Builders of American Literature. 

Johnson's American Orations. 



AMERICAN LITERATURE. 



INTRODUCTORY. 

Definition. — "Literature is the class of writings distinguished 
for beauty of style or expression, as poetry, essays, or history, in 
distinction from scientific treatises and works which contain positive 
knowledge. ' ' — Webster. 

The literature of a nation is the entire body of 
literary productions that has emanated from the people 
of the nation during its history, preserved by the arts of 
writing and printing. It is the embodiment of the best 
thoughts and fancies of a people. 

The History of a Literature is not merely a chrono- 
logical record of all the writers and writings of a lan- 
guage. It is much more ; it is, in reality, the history of 
the evolution of the language and of the intellectual 
development of the people. It should constantly in- 
quire into the causes that tended to produce literature 
of one kind and not of another. It should trace the 
influence of great writers upon their language and their 
times. It should be a guide, ever leading the student 
to the best books, training his judgment so as to enable 
him to estimate critically literary productions, and 



2 AMERICAN LITERATURE. 

teaching him the true place that every book and author 
occupies in the world of letters. 

Fundamental Principles. — To pursue the study of a 
literature to the best advantage one needs a thorough 
knowledge of the language, history, social customs, and 
spirit of the people that produced it, as well as a general 
idea of the geography and climate of their country. 

The great agencies which determine the character of 
a literature must be borne constantly in mind : 

1. Race. — The hereditary disposition of the makers 
of the literature must first be noted. The races inhabit- 
ing the warmer climates are naturally impulsive, with 
strong passions. The northern races are more cold and 
reserved. These characteristics are stamped upon the 
literary product of these races. 

2. Environment. — The surroundings of a people have 
a great effect upon their intellectual development. 
What of the climate? Is the land fertile and easy 
to work, or does it compel the husbandman to expend 
great energy upon it? Is it subject to depressing 
fogs, like Britain, or to violent extremes of temperature 
like Norway ? Is it mountainous like Greece, or flat like 
Holland ? Is it inland like Russia, or maritime like Eng- 
land ? It is this agency that gives color to a literature. 

3. Epoch. — What was the spirit of the age ? What 
has been the history of the nation ? Has it been free dur- 
ing the whole of its history? Has it had to maintain a 
constant fight against invaders, or has it been itself an 
invader? What perplexing questions, intellectual, moral, 
social, has it been called upon to settle ? In what great 



INTRODUCTORY. 6 

movements or events has it participated ? These things 
exert a powerful influence on the intellectual develop- 
ment of a people. It is this agency that divides the 
history of a literature into periods. 

4. Personality. — The personality of the writers who 
produce a literature is not the least of the agencies that 
determine its character. The individuality, the "per- 
sonal equation," of the makers of masterpieces, is some- 
thing that defies analysis, yet it is this that gives life to 
the writings of a nation. Without it the agencies of 
race, environment, and epoch would tend to produce an 
unvarying product. This element gives diversity to a 
literature. 

The Early History of all literatures is much the same. 
The evolution from barbarism to civilization is always 
slow. The language, at first limited and barren, yet 
sufficient to voice all the needs and emotions of savage 
life, becomes more expressive. War brings contact 
with other nations ; conquest adds foreign elements. 
At length the rude shoutings over war and victory 
become rhythmical, and literature begins. The first 
notes are always in verse, — rude and unmetrical, yet 
nevertheless verse, for childhood takes naturally to 
metres. The bloody song of Lamech to his wives, Gen. 
iv. 23, 24, is the first poem of which the world has a 
record. Beowulf a terrible tale of war and carnage, is 
the first note in the grand chorus of English song. 

American Literature. — The term a literature may be 
defined as " all the literary productions in a given lan- 
guage." 



4 AMERICAN LITERATURE. 

By this definition English literature would embrace 
all the writings that have emanated from the race 
speaking the English language. The writings of Amer- 
ica would, therefore, be only a branch drawing life 
from the great trunk of English letters. But this is 
not so. It is now generally admitted that the litera- 
ture of America has become an independent one. It 
is an exception, and the only exception, to the rule 
given above. In no other case in all history have 
there been two distinct literatures written in the same 
language. 

This conclusion has not been reached without discus- 
sion. It is acknowledged that our literature is still 
true to the great fundamental principles underlying 
English thought and institutions ; that it had its birth 
and childhood in the land of Chaucer and of Spenser ; 
that until the second quarter of the Nineteenth Cen- 
tury it was bound intellectually to England, and that 
it is using to-day the language of Wordsworth and 
Tennyson. But this does not prove that our litera- 
ture is not now an independent one, for we have been 
for more than a century an independent nation ; and 
we are recognized abroad not as Englishmen in Amer- 
ica, but as a distinct type with as marked an individu- 
ality as have the English themselves. (See Remarks 
on National Literature, by W. E. Channing, 1823; also 
E. P. Whipple's American Literature, and Richardson, 
I., v-xx. 

The Beginnings of our Literature. — To study Ameri- 
can literature philosophically, one must go back to the 



INTRODUCTORY. 5 

beginnings of the language in which it is written. A 
study of the literature and the intellectual develop- 
ment of England through the Elizabethan Age, should 
precede the thorough study of the American writers. 
This portion of English history is held in common by 
both nations. The elements of race and environment, 
as they affected our English ancestors, must be fully 
understood in order for us to appreciate the character 
and spirit of the founders of our nation. We must 
weigh the great events of British history and their 
influence upon the development of the English race. 
We must acquaint ourselves with the history and 
development of English thought and language ; with 
the great minds that have shaped and moulded these 
from Csedmon to Chaucer and from Chaucer to Shakes- 
peare. This done, we have mastered Book I. of the 
History of American Thought and Literature. It re- 
mains then to trace the intellectual evolution of a part 
of the English people under a new environment, amid 
new scenes of action. 

Epoch. — (Tyler, 11-15.) Our literature made its 
first feeble beginnings in a most fortunate time, a 
time — 

" When the firmament of English literature was all ablaze with 
the light of her full-orbed and most dazzling writers, the wits, the 
dramatists, scholars, orators, singers, philosophers, who formed that 
incomparable group of titanic men gathered in London during the 
earlier years of the seventeenth century." — Tyler. 

When Jamestown was settled in 1607, Spenser had 
been dead only eight years ; Shakespeare was at the 



6 AMERICAN LITERATURE. 

height of his powers ; Raleigh, a prisoner in the Tower 
of London, was engaged on his History of the World, 
and Bacon had just commenced his marvellous work, 
The Novum Organum. " The very air of London must 
have been electric with the daily words of these im- 
mortals," who made the Elizabethan Age the most glo- 
rious period since classic times. American literature 
was indeed fortunate in the time of its birth. 



II. 

THE FIRST COLONIAL PERIOD. 

1607-1688. 

The Renaissance. — The Fifteenth Cen- imo-hoo. Geof- 
frey Chaucer, 
tury is the age of the Renaissance, — the English poet. 

i £ I-, i • j , 1401. First 

awaKenmg ol literature, science, and art, execution for 
from the long slumber of the Dark Ages, J^ 7 j f 
As the direct result of this emancipation Arc burned. 

1440. Printing 

of Europe, there came a period of great from movable 

,..,.,, -.. - ,. types made pub- 

activity m almost every sphere ot action, lie by Gutten- 

bersr. 

The newly invented art of printing with 1453 ' constan- 
movable types marked an era in the his- tu^ed^y^he 
tory of book-making' ; the invention of Turks - 

J & 1460-1471. 

gunpowder completely revolutionized the Wars of the 

JrtOSGS. 

science of war, while the mariner's com- 1474. caxton 

-1 -1 , • , • ,i i • , prints the tirst 

pass marked a turning-point in the history book in Eng- 
of navigation. Everywhere was to be seen ^ 2 Dis 
the activity of fresh intellectual life. ^ tb -e New 

Spirit of the Age. — The Sixteenth Cen- 1497. Cabotdis- 

covers IS*ortli 

tury is the age of discovery. Columbus, America. 
Cabot, Da Gama, Balboa, Magellan, made ^"jn qS^ 
six world-revolutionizing' discoveries in man y- 

& 1520. Magellan 

twenty-nine years. Cortez found a won- circumnavi- 

, , , . ,, . _. , gates the globe. 

derland in Mexico ; Fizarro opened up a 1521. Cortez 
new El Dorado in Peru ; De Soto discov- Mexico' 8 



8 



AMERICAN LITERATURE. 



1531. Pizarro ered a mighty inland river which told of a 

Peru. vast extent of land to the northward, and 

discovers th&° soon tne world was ready to believe almost 
Mississippi. marvellous tale. 

1552-1599. Ed- J 

mund Spencer, The new continent, with its strange 

English poet. 

1552-1618. Sir vegetable and animal life, with its mys- 

Engiish nisto? ' tery and its wealth, appealed powerfully 

i554-i586 P °sir to the Pagination of the masses. It was 

Philip Sidney, literally a new world that was opened to 

poet and knight. J x 

1558-1603. the eyes of Europeans, a world peopled 

Reign of Eliza- , „ , . ,. . , . ,. 

beth. by a race of beings as distinct and mdi- 

1561-1626. yidual as if the only one ever created on 

Francis Bacon, J 

E he g r ish phil ° S °" tne P lanet ' tne objects of the most intense 

1564-1616. curiosity in the Old World. 

Shakespeare, Tl . P n . -, , n 

English poet. It was a century ot feverish dreams ot 

first' v£rinif h ' S new empires, of gold, of conquest. The 

colony. return of Pizarro from Peru with his ship- 
1587. Raleigh's r 

second colony, loads of treasure set all Europe on fire. 

Re^gno? Spain, England, and France took the lead, 

James I. an( ^ Y ^ e ^ w ith each other in a mad scramble 

1608. Quebec 

founded by for the new continent. 

Champlain. 

1608-1674. The Colonial Age. — (Fisher's Colonial 

En^poe't. Era, Thwaite's The Colonies, 1492-1750.) 

1609. Hudson The Age of Discovery was succeeded in 

discovers the , "; 

Hudson River. America by the Colonial Age. The spirit 

of maritime adventure and exploration which had grown 
into a passion during the early part of the Sixteenth 
Century began to subside as the new continent became 
better known, and the nations now sought to make good 

their claims to acquired territory by planting colonies. 



THE FIRST COLONIAL PERIOD. 9 

America had a powerful influence in moulding the 
spirit of the age. 

" Every great European event affected the fortunes of America. 
Did a state prosper, it sought an increase of wealth by plantations 
in the west. Was a sect persecuted, it escaped to the new world." 
— Bancroft, Yol. II. 

The Colonial Age may be divided into two distinct 
periods, — The First Colonial Period, which extends 
from 1607, the year of Jamestown settlement, to 1688, 
the year of the revolution which placed William and 
Mary on the English throne ; and The Second Colonial 
Period, which opens with the date 1688 and ends in 
1765, the year of the Stamp Act and the birth of the 
Revolutionary spirit in the colonies. 

The First Colonial Period (1607-1688). 

(Fisher's Colonial Era; Bancroft, Vol. I.; Hildreth, 
Vol. I.; Lodge's English Colonies in America.) Dur- 
ing the eighty-one years included in the first colonial 
period, thirteen colonies of widely differing character- 
istics, founded for thirteen different reasons, yet all of 
them of English stock in the end, were planted along 
the Atlantic coast of America. 

The eighty years were filled with action. It was 
no easy task to subdue a raw continent. To establish 
homes in a savage wilderness subject to cruel winters ; 
to hew down the forest ; to clear the rocky, stump- 
strewn fields and fit them for cultivation ; to be con- 
stantly in terror of wild beasts and savage men, — all 
of these things called for unrelenting physical toil, and 



10 AMERICAN LITERATURE. 

left little time to be devoted to the arts and graces of 
literature. 

The whole period produced nothing of literary worth. 
A few writings, the offspring mainly of necessity, have 
come down to us, but they are valuable simply as curi- 
osities or as documents for the historian. The period is 
to be studied not for its literary product, but for the 
light it throws on our later literary history. 

Virginia and Massachusetts. — (Tyler, 83-85 ; Fiske, 
Civil Government, 16-19, 57-62 ; Johns Hopkins Univer- 
sity Studies.) The two colonies of Virginia and Massa- 
chusetts are all that need be studied in an elementary 
history of American literature. They are the fountain 
heads of all that is strongest in our national and our 
literary history. Planted for widely different reasons, 
by men of almost opposite traits of character, and for 
more than a century having no intercourse at all with 
each other, they at length became the intellectual centres 
of our early national life. Lowell has called them " The 
two great distributing centres of the English race " in 
America. (See Among My Books, 1st series, 239.) 

1. VIRGINIA. 

" Britons, you stay too long ; 
Quickly aboard bestow you; 

And with a merry gale 

Swell your stretch'd sail; 
With vows as strong 
As the winds that blow you. 



THE FIRST COLONIAL PERIOD. 11 

And cheerfully at sea, 
Success you still entice : 

To get the pearl and gold; 

And ours to hold; 
Virginia 
Earth's only paradise." 

So sang the grand old Elizabethan poet, Michael 
Drayton, when the three vessels that were fitting on 
the Thames for their memorable voyage were completing 
arrangements. England had made attempt after at- 
tempt during the reign of Elizabeth to establish colonies 
in her vast possessions in the west, but all of them had 
failed miserably. But in 1603 it was discovered that 
Virginia could be reached by sailing due west instead 
of taking the long dangerous route by way of the West 
Indies, — a discovery that created great excitement 
throughout England, and indeed throughout Europe. 
As a result, large numbers became eager to try their 
fortunes in the vast unknown El Dorado, now for the 
first time made accessible. The newly organized London 
Company soon sent out a fleet of three small ships, 
which, after being blown about by the winds of the At- 
lantic from April until December, were at last swept 
blindly and roughly by a fierce storm into the mouth of 
Chesapeake Bay. The building of the few rude huts 
which soon arose on the bank of the James was the 
most significant event that had happened in the new 
world since its discovery. It marked the opening of a 
new era in the history of North America. 

The Settlers of Virginia. —(Cooke, 16-33 ; Neill's His- 



12 AMERICAN LITERATURE. 

tory of the Virginia Company, 1869 ; Stitli's Settlement 
of Virginia, 1865.) It will be found important, as 
throwing light on our later literary development, to 
look carefully at these early emigrants who laid the 
foundation of Virginia. Of the one hundred and five 
men who composed the first expedition, nearly one-half 
were "gentlemen" with absolutely no experience in 
manual labor, and a large proportion of the remainder 
were soldiers and servants. They were of the Royalist 
party, and the Church of England. Many of them had 
squandered their ancestral estates and now sought 
America, led on by dreams of sudden conquest, and 
dazzling riches. Many were adventurers born of the 
protracted wars with Spain ; some were worthless idlers, 
and even criminals fleeing from justice. Not one of 
them dreamed of a permanent home in the new land. 
They had had no falling out with the mother country ; 
they had no desire to found a new order of society ; they 
were without religious scruples or anything else, save a 
desire for speedy wealth — for gold that could be picked 
up in large nuggets without exertion. 

Many of the later arrivals, drawn by the rich tobacco 
plantation, were from the higher classes, yet during the 
first half-century " the large proportion of the settlers in 
Virginia were of inferior quality, personally and socially," 
and many of them were " broken men, adventurers, 
bankrupts, criminals." 

The Physical Geography of Virginia had much to do 
in shaping its history. It has a delightful climate, a 
soil of marvellous fertility ; it is traversed by numerous 



THE FIRST COLONIAL PERIOD. 13 

noble rivers,' many of them navigable for a long distance 
from the sea, a fact that made it easy for plantations to 
rely upon supplies brought by vessels up the rivers, and 
that made the village grocery store, which was so prom- 
inent a feature in New England, a useless institution. 
The land was early found to be very favorable for the 
cultivation of tobacco, a crop which exhausts the soil 
more rapidly than almost any other. It was at first 
found more profitable to move to new fields after ex- 
hausting one plantation than to resort to the use of fer- 
tilizers, which accounts for the early scattering of the 
colonists over a wide area. Tobacco at once became the 
one crop of Virginia ; it made manufacturing impossible. 
" Its influence," says one writer, " permeated the entire 
social sphere of the colony, directed its laws, and was 
an element in all its political and religious disturbances." 
Social Conditions. — As a result of these combinations 
there arose a system of society which was peculiar to 
Virginia. The people did not settle in villages as in 
New England, but lived far distant from each other on 
large estates. " In Jamestown, the capital of the state, 
there were only eighteen houses." The owner of a large 
estate, grown rich from the cultivation of tobacco which 
he shipped, himself, to England, surrounded himself with 
laborers and slaves and li^ed in imitation of the owners 
of the English estates, a free and hospitable life, spend- 
ing his leisure time in field sports and politics. Two 
classes of society were the result : the rich landowners, 
and the poor laborers and slaves. This condition of 
society made free schools impossible. During the whole 



14 AMERICAN LITERATURE. 

of the first Colonial period, "no mention is anywhere 
made in the records of schools, or any provision for the 
instruction of youth." 

Another significant fact is that there was no perma- 
nent printing press in the colony until 1729. Education 
and literature were frowned upon. Sir William Berke- 
ley, governor of Virginia from 1641 to 1677, in one of 
his reports remarked: 

" I thank God there are no free schools nor printing ; and I hope 
we shall not have these hundred years ; for learning has brought 
disobedience and heresy and sects into the world and printing has 
divulged them and libels against the best government. God keep 
us from both." 

It is needless to say that a society made up of such 
persons, and under such conditions, could not possibly be 
favorable to the cultivation of literature. Indeed, so 
unfavorable was it that, during the whole of her history 
Virginia has not produced a purely literary work of 
even the second rank. Many of the planters came from 
the ruling families of England, and from the discipline 
acquired from the managing of large estates they learned 
that mastery over men and events that made the state 
" the Mother of Presidents," of fiery orators and astute 
statesmen, but the conditions were far from conducive 
to literary life and effort. 

Early Writings in Virginia. — The literature of the 
Colonial age in Virginia is so scanty and uninteresting 
as to deserve little attention. Much of it was written 
for purely practical ends with little thought of finish or 
literary beauty. Interspersed with this is the work of 



THE FIRST COLONIAL PERIOD. 15 

a few English scholars who made a brief sojourn in the 
new land and then flitted back across the ocean. Of 
the principal writers of the first Colonial period, all 
except one, Alexander Whitaker, who had come "to 
bear the name of God to the heathen" of the New 
World, returned to England after a few years. The 
writings of the period may be roughly gathered into 
four groups : 

1. Letters to friends in England. These, written often 
in haste, with no thought of literary finish, are full of 
observations on the strange scenes and surroundings 
into which the lives of their writers had fallen. They 
are of value now only so far as they throw light on 
the history, society, and spirit of the age that produced 
them. 

2. Descriptions of the Indians, of the geography of 
the country, of the new flora and fauna, and of the 
history of the early days of the settlement. Smith's 
A True Relation, etc., and A Map of Virginia; and 
Whitaker's Good News from Virginia, are the best 
examples of this class of literature. 

3. Letters legal, and reports to the Companies in 
England, as, for example, Smith's Answers to the Seven 
Questions, etc. 

4. Scholarly works written by Englishmen of leisure 
sojourning for a time in America. These cannot be 
classed as American Literature any more than Irving's 
Sketch Book can be called an English book because it 
was written in England. Among such writings may be 
mentioned Sandys' translation of Ovid's Metamorphoses. 



16 AMERICAN LITERATURE. 



Captain John Smith (1579-1631). 

" The father of Virginia, the true leader who first planted the 
Saxon race within the borders of the United States." — Bancroft. 

ATrue Relation Life (by William Gilmore Simms ; by 

Letter to the G. S. Hillard, in Sparks' American Biog- 

pamj™ C ° m ~ ra P^ Vol. IL ; by C. D. Warner. See 

AMapofVir- a i so Eggleston's Pocahontas, and Henry 

ginia. . 

Adams' Historical Essays, 42. The chief 
authorities on the life of Smith are his own autobio- 
graphical writings). 

The romantic life of Captain John Smith is too well 
known to need retelling. His character, too, needs no 
new light shed upon it. We must acknowledge that 
he was inordinately vain, fond of boasting, impetuous, 
imperious, restless, yet we know that his shrewdness, 
his indomitable courage, and his sound judgment more 
than once saved the Virginia Colony from ruin. " It 
is not too much to say," writes an eminent English 
critic, "that had not Captain Smith strove, fought, 
and endured as he did, the present United States of 
America might never have come into existence. It 
was contrary to all probability that where so many had 
succumbed already, the Southern Virginia Company's 
expedition of 1606-7 should have succeeded." 

Cooke, the historian of Virginia, writes of Smith : 

" His endurance was unshrinking, and his life in Virginia in- 
dicated plainly that he had enormous recoil. He was probably 
never really cast down, and seems to have kept his heart of hope, 
without an effort in the darkest hours, when all around him 
despaired." 



THE FIRST COLONIAL PERIOD. 17 

Smith as a Writer. — (Tyler, 16-38 ; Richardson, L, 
63-72.) Of the nine works, with American themes, 
written by Smith, three were composed in Virginia. 
His first book, written during the thirteen months 
following the establishment of the colony, and pub- 
lished in London the next year, is doubly interesting, 
in that it is the first book produced on this continent, 
and that it tells in detail the story of those memorable 
months at Jamestown. Its full title is as follows : 

" A True Relation of such occurrences and accidents of noate as 
hath happened in Virginia since the first planting of that Cottony, 
which is now resident in the south part thereof till the last return from 
thence. . . . Written by Captaine Smith, Coronell of said Cottony, 
to a worshipfull friend of his in England. London 1 608. ' ' 

Smith's second work was a very spicy reply to the 
seven questions put by the London Company, to him as. 
governor of Virginia. With this, Smith sent his third 
American work, entitled A Map of Virginia, etc., which, 
however, was not published until 1612. 

2. MASSACHUSETTS. 

The Pilgrims. — (Bradford and Winslow's Journal, 
and Bradford's History of the Plymouth Plantation; 
Palfrey's History of New England ; Fiske's Beginnings 
of New England, 66-104 ; Doyle's The Puritan Colonies, 
Vol. II.; Young's Chronicles of the Pilgrims ; Drake's 
TheMaking of New England; Bancroft, Vol. L, 194-214.) 
The small band of adventurers who sought Virginia 
in 1606, led on by dreams of " pearl and gold," were 
swept along by a three days' storm and driven as by 



18 AMERICAN LITERATURE. 

the hand of fate into the noblest bay along the Atlantic 
1571-1630. coast, to a land of wonderful beauty and 

mana'stron- fruitfulness, at a time when all nature 
omer. was r0Dec i { n the freshness and beauty of 

1593-1683. m m J 

Isaac Walton, the early springtime. What a contrast 
discovers a circu- with the little group of Pilgrims who four- 

lationofthe , ■, , • i i .• 

biood. teen years later, weaned by persecution, 

1628-1688. exiles from their native land, without 

John Bunyan. 

1629-1640. money or means to return across the sea 

1630. Boston even Da( i they desired so to do, were landed 

irQi 16 ™ on the savage coast of Massachusetts, at 

jonnDryden. the very beginning of a cruel, northern 

The Common- winter. The Virginians had all been men, 

1665. Plague in man y °f them inured to hardships by war 
London. an( j ^ Q ij ves f adventure, but here were 

1666. Great # ' 

London Fire. women and little children, — whole fam- 
King Philip's ilies. Many were sick. For months it 
was a battle with cold, hunger, disease, 
hostile Indians, wild beasts ; a battle for mere existence. 
Never was there a more unpromising venture as viewed 
from a practical standpoint; never was there a more 
discouraging outlook than from the huts of Plymouth 
during that memorable winter ; yet nev^r has there been 
a venture that has yielded grander results. Dec. 20, 
1620, is the most significant date in our history. 



Required Reading. — Mrs. Hemans' "Landing of the Pil- 
grims;" Longfellow's "Courtship of Miles Standish." See also 
Mrs. Child's Hobomok; Mrs. Stowe's The Mayflower; Mrs. Aus- 
tin's Standish of Standish, Betty Alden, Dr. LeBaron and his 
Daughters, and A Nameless Nobleman. 



THE FIRST COLONIAL PERIOD. 19 

Puritan Traits. — (Greene's Short History of the 
English People, III., 19-35 ; Neale's History of the Puri- 
tans ; Taine's English Literature, II., ch. v.; Tyler, 
91-109; Richardson, I. 10-21.) 

The settlers of Massachusetts differed from the early 
Virginians in almost every respect. They did not seek 
America for worldly gain ; they were not adventurers 
cast up by the tide of chance, nor were they carried 
across the sea by a wave of popular enthusiasm. They 
were earnest and prayerful, prone to act only after ma- 
ture deliberation, and they had come to America to stay. 

As we study the history of the intellectual develop- 
ment of New England, it must be borne constantly in 
mind that her founders were deeply religious men. 
Religion was their vocation. They subordinated every- 
thing to this one great, ruling thought. Their convic- 
tions were intense and they obeyed them at any cost. 
Rather than use the book of Common Prayer and wear 
the robes prescribed for the clergy by the Church of 
England, they chose to leave all that society holds dear 
and take wife and child into the wilds across " the vast 
and furious ocean " where they might be free to worship 
God as they pleased. 

After purchasing religious freedom at such a price, it 
is but natural that they should be intolerant of those 
who would pervert their belief, and we are not surprised 
to find them in turn persecutors. They fiercely as- 
sailed the Quakers ; they drove Roger Williams and 
Anne Hutchinson into the wilderness, and in Salem 
hanged nineteen persons suspected of being witches. 



20 AMERICAN LITERATURE. 

They viewed with alarm the increasing commercial 
spirit among the New England seaports. In 1663 we 
hear a venerable Salem clergyman sounding this note of 
warning : 

" It concerneth New England always to remember that she was 
originally a plantation religious, not a plantation of trade. The 
profession of the purity of doctrine, worship and discipline is 
written upon her forehead. Let merchants and such as are 
increasing cent, per cent, remember this : that worldly gain was 
not the end and design of the people of New England, but religion. 
If any man among us make religion as twelve and the world as thir- 
teen, such an one has not the spirit of a true New England man." 

Another characteristic of these men was their intense 
earnestness. They were never idle. Whatever they 
did, whether in religion, politics, education, or toil for 
daily bread, they did with their might. Life was a 
terrible reality. " I am resolved," wrote Jonathan 
Edwards, " to live with all my might while I do live." 
They had no time for earthly pleasures. Gayety and 
beauty, adornment of person or anything even approach- 
ing luxury were looked upon as things from Satan. 
Their lives were sad and cheerless. They disciplined 
themselves to think constantly on things pertaining to 
another world. Their God was a terrible being whose 
awful anger was easily kindled, and the sulphurous 
glare of the burning pit was kept constantly before 
the eyes of the careless. 

If they became more gloomy and superstitious than 
the Puritans of England, the fact can be easily explained. 

They were "surrounded by Circumstances and pressed by griefs 
and anxieties, such as incline to sad and unhealthy meditation. . . . 



THE FIRST COLONIAL PERIOD. 21 

An ocean divided them from the old seats of civilized life. Almost 
in the primitive nakedness of existence they were waging a contest 
with the awful elements. Their little settlements were isolated 
and unjoyous. The scene all around, — river, rock, covert, moun- 
tain, forest, — almost as wild and sombre as creation left it, invited 
to stern and melancholy musing." — Palfrey. 

Such were the founders of New England. For ten 
years after the first settlement, very few ventured to the 
new colony, but between 1630 and 1640 they came in 
multitudes. The opening of the Long Parliament dur- 
ing the latter year practically put an end to the Puritan 
exodus from England, but it has been estimated that 
there were then twenty-one thousand souls in the fifty 
towns of New England. 

The Physical Geography of New England has greatly 
affected her development. When the Pilgrims first saw 
the region, it was covered with an almost unbroken 
forest. Its surface was rugged and strewn thick with 
bowlders, the relics of the Glacial Age. The great 
walls and heaps of stones about the cultivated fields 
tell of the task it has been to subdue and humanize it. 
Its rivers, with few exceptions, are not navigable. They 
come plunging down from the mountain sides, affording 
wonderful water-powers, the best in the world. Unlike 
Virginia, the country afforded few inducements to set- 
tlers. Large plantations were impossible ; tobacco could 
not be grown with profit; agriculture was confined to 
the owners of small farms, — hillside fields wrested by 
sheer force from the domain of nature and little tracts 
along the rivers. These farms produced under severe 
toil enough to supply their owners with food. Manu- 



22 AMERICAN LITERATURE. 

facturing, for which the country is best adapted, was 
forbidden by England. During the Colonial period 
there were few exports save lumber, furs, and fish. The 
last item should not be overlooked, for so important a 
part did it play in the early history of Massachusetts 
that, to signify the source of her wealth, the figure of a 
codfish was hung in the State House in Boston. The 
rich fishing grounds off Cape Cod and the grand banks of 
Newfoundland were within easy reach. Whole townships 
and villages along the coast were devoted to this pursuit, 
the inhabitants leading a sort of dual life between the 
little farm at home and the sea. In later years the 
whale fishery became of great importance. The mag- 
nificent harbors all along the coast invited commerce. 
Shipbuilding grew to be a leading industry. Thus New 
England became, on account of its physical features 
like old England. Nature intended both for maritime 
enterprise and a manufacturing life. Both were to be 
sturdy intellectual centres from which was to emanate 
a wide-spread and dominating influence. 

Literary Conditions. — (Tyler, 109-114 ; Richardson, 
I., ch. 2 ; Stedman, 11-26.) Among such men, in such 
an environment, literature was a natural product. All 
the conditions necessary for intellectual growth were 
early to be found. New England emphasized the things 
that Virginia neglected, and developed herself accord- 
ingly. Chief among the causes that made her, in time, 
a literary influence, were : 

1. A Centralized Society. — The people settled in 
groups and not, as in Virginia, on isolated plantations. 



THE FIRST COLONIAL PERIOD. 23 

This was brought about largely by that religious devo- 
tion that forbade families settling far from the church. 
Previous to 1640 many entire congregations under the 
leadership of their pastors came from England and 
established little villages, the germs of future cities. 
There were other reasons for centralization. It was 
unsafe to live far from the " block house," the common 
refuge in times of danger from Indians. Supplies must 
be obtained, not as in Virginia from boats plying upon 
the rivers, but from, centres of trade. Thus in New- 
England the town became in time the political unit ; 
as the county became the unit in Virginia. -Everything 
tended to bring men into close contact. 

Schools and colleges and literary culture nourish best 
in towns and cities where there is a constant inter- 
change of experiences, of books, of letters and ideas. 

2. Education. — It was a belief of the fathers of New 
England that "one chief project of that old deluder, 
Satan," is to keep men in ignorance. They, therefore, 
regarded the educating of their children as a solemn 
religious duty. 

The settlers were mostly from the common walks of 
life, — craftsmen and farmers, — but their leaders and 
ministers were deeply learned men. The 1536. Harvard, 
percentage of those in New England who 1693. College 

f & of William and 

were college bred was even larger than it Mary, 

is at the present time. In the little colony 1700, Yale - 

of Massachusetts Bay there were ninety f New Jersey. 

graduates of Cambridge and of Oxford. 1754. King's 

° . & College (now 

With such men for leaders education could Columbia). 



24 AMERICAN LITERATURE. 

1755. Univer- not languish. The school house came to 

sity of Penu- . 

sylvania. be considered second only to the church 

u~°™ in importance. 

1769. Dart- Fearing that the plantations would be- 

1770 Kut r come ? as Mather expressed it, "mere un- 
1775. Hamp- watered places for the devil," unless they 
had a university, the settlers in 1636 estab- 
lished a college. Four hundred pounds in money was 
at first pledged. Two years later, by the will of John 
Harvard, a young Charleston minister, the little college 
received seven or eight hundred pounds and, for those 
times, a large library. It is somewhat startling to think 
that this was only sixteen years after, the Pilgrims first 
landed on the desolate shores of New England. Yale 
College came sixty-five years later. In their enthusi- 
asm for education the colonists even tried to apply the 
classics to the Indian, founding Dartmouth College for 
that purpose in 1769. 

The common school system was early established. 
Every town of fifty families was compelled by law to 
maintain a public school, and every town of one hun- 
dred families must have a school to fit pupils for Har- 
vard College. 

The Pilgrims builded better than they knew. The 
educational system, thus inaugurated, has become the 
foundation that underlies all the intellectual product 
of America. 

3. The church was in itself an educational factor 
that must not be overlooked. An educated clergy, and 
a public sentiment that compelled every one to be a 



THE FIRST COLONIAL PERIOD. 25 

constant attendant upon the Sabbath services, were 
great incentives to intellectual activity. The sermons 
of the time were deep and carefully elaborated. Deal- 
ing with argumentative and doctrinal themes, they 
dragged their inexorable length through two and even 
three hours. Often the preacher gave a series of ser- 
mons on some particular topic, carefully impressing it, 
point by point, upon his hearers after the manner of a 
professor of divinity in a college. The people listened 
eagerly. Mather, in his life of the Elder Winthrop, 
records . that " such was his attention and such his 
retention in hearing, that he repeated unto his family 
the sermons which he had heard in the congregation." 
Those with less trusty memories came to church with 
note books, and gathered, like a class in divinity, the 
important points brought out by the preacher. 

The age was an argumentative one. Fierce theologi- 
cal battles were waging on all sides. The men of New 
England had taken a bold and radical step before the 
eyes of the world, and they held themselves ready to 
defend their creed with all the logic and argument 
at their command. Under such church discipline they 
gained the weapons most needed. Thus were culti- 
vated those powers of attention, of close and consecu- 
tive reasoning, which in after years reached their fullest 
development in Edwards and Franklin. 

Metaphysics and theological argument are not litera- 
ture, yet they gave to the builders of New England an 
intellectuality that soon made possible purely literary 
work. 



26 AMERICAN LITERATURE. 

Unfavorable Influences. — It must not be inferred that 
everything done by the Pilgrims was destined to bear 
rich fruit. Many influences were at work decidedly 
hostile to literary production, and, indeed, to any degree 
of symmetrical intellectual development, but fortunately 
the good outweighed the bad. Among these unfavora- 
ble influences only three need be mentioned. 

1. Puritan Narrowness. — Hawthorne has admirably 
summed up this influence. 

Life in the Puritan settlements "must have trudged onward 
with hardly anything to diversify and enliven it, while also its 
rigidity could not fail to cause miserable distortions of the moral 
nature. Such a life was sinister to the intellect and sinister to the 
heart ; especially when one generation had bequeathed its religious 
gloom, and the counterfeit of its religious ardor, to the next. . . . 
The sons and grandchildren of the first settlers were a race of 
lower and narrower souls than their progenitors had been. The 
latter were stern, severe, intolerant, but not superstitious, not even 
fanatical; and endowed, if any men of that age were, with a 'far- 
seeing worldly sagacity. But it was impossible for the succeeding 
race to grow up, in heaven's freedom, beneath the discipline which 
their gloomy energy of character had established ; nor, it may be, 
have we even yet thrown off all the unfavorable influences which, 
among many good ones, were bequeathed to us by our Puritan 
forefathers." — The Snow Image, " Main Street." 

2. Lack of JEsthetic Taste. — Beauty, whether in art, 
literature, or external surroundings, was looked upon 
with suspicion. The romance and the drama were con- 
demned as vanities ; poetry, aside from hymns and relig- 
ious jingles, was a mere waste of words; sculpture and 
painting were regarded with horror as a direct violation 
of the Second Commandment ; while the desire for orna- 



THE FIRST COLONIAL PERIOD. > 27 

ment, either in architecture or dress, was supposed to 
come directly from the devil. 

3. Licensed Printing. — The Puritans regarded the 
press much as did old Governor Berkeley of Virginia. 
Their terror of its power to mould the public mind is 
half ludicrous as we view it to-day. In 1639, a press 
was set up in Cambridge to be watched over by the 
Argus eyes of the university authorities. But these 
guardians of the awful engine became at length too 
liberal, and a board of licensers was appointed to take 
their place. The result of this restriction upon print- 
ing was an inevitable one. The first feeble attempt at 
a newspaper, in 1690, died at its birth. For more than 
a century journalism lived as it could ; historical writ- 
ings were confined to a few dry journals ; poetry worthy 
of the name was unknown. Little save sermons and 
controversial pamphlets issued from the press. It has 
been found that between the years 1706 and 1718 five 
hundred and fifty publications were printed in Amer- 
ica; u of these all but eighty-four were on religious 
topics, and of the eighty-four, forty-nine were almanacs." 

The Bay Psalm Book. — (Cambridge, 1640.) 

" The worst of many bad." — John Nichol. 

This curious old work holds the somewhat enviable 
distinction of being the first book printed in America. 
It was the joint production of several eminent divines 
prominent among whom were " the apostle " Eliot and 
Richard Mather. The compilers put all of their tre- 
mendous energy and will power into the task of turn- 






28 AMERICAN LITERATURE. 

ing the Psalms of David into metrical form for church 
use, and the result was one of the most marvellous pro- 
ductions ever written in English. It need not be said to 
one who has read even a fragment from this book that the 
men of early New England were anything but poetical. 
" Everywhere in the book," writes Tyler, " is manifest 
the agony it cost the writers to find two words that 
would rhyme, — more or less." A brief extract will 
characterize it better than a page of description. 



Psalm CXXXVLL 

" The rivers on of Babilon, 

there when wee did sit downe, 
Yea, even then wee monrned when 
we remembered Sion. 

"Our harp wee did hang it amid 
upon the willow tree, 
because there they that us away 
led into captivitee, 

" Required of us a song, and thus 
askt mirth as waste who laid, 
Sing us among a Sion song, 
unto us then they said. 

" The Lord's song sing, can wee, being 
in stranger's land ? then let 
lose her skill my right hand if I 
Jerusalem forget." 

The Literature of the Period falls naturally into three 
groups : Journals and Historical Works, Religious and 
Theological Writings, and Poetry. 



THE FIRST COLONIAL PERIOD. 29 

I. HISTORICAL WORKS. 

From the very first, the Pilgrims seem to have been 
conscious of their high destiny. They never for a 
moment doubted that they were the pioneers of a new 
era, and they realized that in future years their every 
act would be regarded with great interest. They there- 
fore determined that posterity should have a truthful 
report of all their acts and motives. 

1. William Bradford (1588-1657). 

"The Father of American History." 

No writer of contemporary history was ever more 
favored by circumstances than was William Bradford, 
the historian of Plymouth, since the „. 

J > ' Historij of Ply- 

greater part of the stirring scenes of mouth Pianta- 
which he wrote passed under his own journal (with 
eye. Born in Yorkshire, in 1588, he msow ^ 
became, while yet a boy, a member of the little com- 
pany of Puritans that, under the lead of their pastor, 
Robinson, fled to Holland. At the age of thirty-two, 
he was among the passengers on the Mayflower. From 
1621 until his death, he was governor of Plymouth 
Plantation. 

Bradford's history is, in reality, a journal kept with 
extreme care. Commencing at the root of the matter, 
it gives a careful account of the origin of the religious 
dissensions in England from which the Puritan sect 
arose ; it records the persecutions and sufferings of the 



30 AMERICAN LITERATURE. 

various congregations ; the flight of the little flock to 
Holland and thence to America, and the daily life of 
those first eventful years. The narrative continues 
down to the year 1646. It is accurate and readable, 
and it is almost the only authority for the period which 
it covers. 

The manuscript has had a romantic history. It was 
not published, and at the death of its author it passed 
from hand to hand, many of the historians of the time 
making large extracts from it, until at length it found 
its way into the archives of the old South Church of 
Boston. After the British occupation of this church 
during the Revolution, it disappeared,' and for almost 
a century it was mourned as lost. But in 1855, it was 
found in the library of the Bishop of London and pub- 
lished entire by the Massachusetts Historical Society. 

Eequired Reading. — Extracts from Bradford's History. 
Maynard, Merrill & Co. 

2. John Winthrop (1588-1646). 

Life (by Robert C. Winthrop ; by Joseph H. Twitch- 
ell). — As Bradford is the historian of the Plymouth 
Colony, so Winthrop is the chronicler of 

History of New J x 

England. Massachusetts Bay. He was the first gov- 

ernor of the Plantation, and from 1643 
until his death he was governor of the united Colonies 
of Massachusetts. 

The first entries in Winthrop's journal were made on 
shipboard during the long two months' voyage to New 



THE FIRST COLONIAL PERIOD. 31 

England in 1630, and the entries were continued from 
time to time until their author's death. 

These journals, by the most prominent men in the 
two colonies, naturally invite comparison. Bradford's 
work is without doubt the better of the two. It is 
readable, and its literary style is excellent. Winthrop's 
history is dull and often unreadable. It has more his- 
torical value than Bradford's, simply because the Colony 
of Massachusetts Bay became of more importance than 
the Plymouth Plantation. Winthrop delights in record- 
ing miracles, apparitions, and monstrosities. He dwells 
on the darker side of Puritanism, while Bradford con- 
stantly aims to display its brighter phases. 

Winthrop's history has proved a rich mine for later 
writers. Hawthorne probably conceived of his Scarlet 
Letter while perusing its pages. He found in it the 
story of "Endicott and the Red Cross," and "The May- 
pole of Merry Mount." Whittier's "John Underbill" 
and many of Longfellow's New England Tragedies were 
founded on facts obtained from this old diary. 

Required Reading. — Whittier's "John Underhill"; Haw- 
thorne's " Endicott and the Red Cross." 

3. Thomas Morton (1590-1646). 

" The roistering Morton of Merry Mount." — Longfellow, "Rhyme 
of Sir Christopher." 

Just five years after the planting of the Plymouth 
Colony there settled at Mount Wollaston, now Brain- 
tree, Massachusetts, one Thomas Morton, with a bois- 
terous crew of merry fellows who on May day, 1626, 



32 AMERICAN LITERATURE. 

christened the hill " Merry Mount " and held high 
TheNewEng- carnival about a May-pole. The settle- 
land Canaan. m ent SO on became very offensive to its 
Puritan neighbors, and shortly afterward the pole was 
cut down by Miles Standish and his men, and Morton 
was sent to England. Attempting to return, he was 
again sent back. 

Morton avenged his wrongs by writing, in England, 
The New England Canaan, a coarse and boisterous 
book, ridiculing the Puritan faith and manners. Its 
facts are not trustworthy, and its descriptions are 
grossly exaggerated. Upon the author's return to New 
England he was imprisoned one year for this offence. 
Hawthorne's May Pole of Merry Mount and Motley's 
Merry Mount are founded on incidents in Morton's 
career. 

Thomas Morton of " Merry Mount " should not be con- 
founded with Nathaniel Morton of Plymouth Colony, 
who published in 1669 New England's Memorial, a his- 
tory of the colony from 1620 to 1646, copied largely 
from the history of his uncle, William Bradford, and 
from Winslow's Journal. 

II. THEOLOGICAL WORKS. 

The various theological factions that fought so fiercely 
throughout the Colonial era, poured into each other's 
ranks a leaden hail of pamphlets. The few surviving 
relics of these battles, with quaint, long titles, and dry- 
as-dust contents, are valuable now only to the historian 
and the antiquarian. 



THE FIRST COLONIAL PERIOD. 33 



1. Roger Williams (1606-1683). 

"An able, earnest, and successful pioneer in that great movement 
toward religious freedom which has characterized the history of the 
United States. ... No American ever wrote more boldly or truth- 
fully." — Bichardson. 

Life (by J. O. Knowles ; by Romeo Elton ; by Z. A. 
Mudge ; by R. A. Gould). Although the Puritans had 
dreamed of America as a land where they might wor- 
ship without opposition, they never fully realized this 
fond ideal. Opponents sprang up all The Bloody 
around them. The Quakers and the Bap- Tenet yet more 

Bloody, and nu- 

tists gave them no end of trouble. In merous other 

. . pamphlets. 

1630 Roger Williams, a minister of the 
Church of England, just turned non-conformist, settled 
among them and began a bitter war of argument. He 
was finally driven from the Colony. Thereupon with a 
few followers he established a settlement near what is 
now the city of Providence, Rhode Island. 

The whole life of Roger Williams was spent in a 
warfare of theological debate. He defended the Bap- 
tists and the Quakers, exposed without mercy the weak 
points of Puritanism, and stood always on the side of 
truth and progress. He defended his every position 
with showers of pamphlets. 

2. John Eliot (1604-1690). 
"The Apostle to the Indians." 

Although producing little that can be accounted as 
literature, John Eliot deserves prominent mention in 



34 AMERICAN LITERATURE. 

Translation of the history of American letters. He seems 

the Bible into , , . , , *• i • 

the Indian to have been the only one ol his genera- 

Psairns in In- ^ on w ^° reanze d that the Indian possessed 
dian metre. an immortal soul. He devoted his life to 

Bay Psalm . 

Book. Bam- the task of winning these souls for Christ. 
Not only did he learn the Indian tongue, 
but he translated the entire Bible into the language. 
The task was a herculean one. 

" To learn a language utterly unlike all other tongues, . . . 
a language never written, and the strange words which seemed 
inexpressible by letters, — first to learn this new variety of speech, 
and then to translate the Bible into it, and to do it so carefully that 
not one idea throughout the holy book should be changed, — this 
was what the Apostle Eliot did." — Grandfather's Chair. 

Eliot's Bible is now the most valuable relic of a 
vanished race. Aside from its great interest to the 
ethnologist and the antiquarian, it has the added inter- 
est of being the first Bible printed in America. Copies 
of it are exceedingly rare and costly. 

Required Reading. — Hawthorne's Grandfather's Chair, Part 
I., Ch. 8. Eliot's Brief Narrative of the Progress of the Gospel among 
the Indians. 1670. Old South Leaflets. 



III. POETRY. 

A glance at the old Bay Psalm Book is enough to 
convince any one that the Puritan age was anything but 
a poetical one. Nevertheless we find among the early 
colonists many writers of verse, at least two of which 
were proudly classed by their contemporaries among the 
great poets of all time. Only these two need be con- 
sidered here. 



THE FIRST COLONIAL PERIOD 35 



1. Anne (Dudley) Bradstreet (1612-1672). 
"The Morning Star of American Poetry.*' 

Since the days of Sappho no poetess was ever more 
extravagantly praised by contemporaries than was Anne 
Bradstreet, the " Tenth Muse " of the Puri- The Tenth 
tans of early New England. The daughter ^tempia- 
of Governor Thomas Dudley, she had ac- tions - 
companied her stern old father into the forests of Mas- 
sachusetts Bay with the earliest settlers of that province. 
It was her happy lot to strike the first note in the grand 
chorus of American poetry. 

In 1650 there appeared in London, with the follow- 
ing long-winded title, the first book of American verse 
ever printed abroad : 

" The Tenth Muse lately sprung up in America; or, General 
Poems, compiled with a great variety of wit and learning, full of 
delight ; wherein especially is contained a complete discourse and de- 
scription of the four elements, constitutions, ages of man, seasons of the 
year; together with an exact epitome of the four Monarchies, viz., the 
Assyrian, Persian, Grecian, Roman; also a dialogue between old 
England and New concerning the late troubles; ivith divers other 
pleasant and serious poems. By a gentlewoman in those parts." 

With such subjects did Anne Bradstreet woo the 
Muses, and her poem is just what we might expect 
from its title. Her numbers were seldom correct ; she 
lacked the fine touch of the true poet, and her themes 
were such that not even genius could lift them into the 
realm of poesy, yet in spite of all this she deserves much 
praise, since hers was the hand that first beckoned the 
lyric muse to these shores. 



36 AMERICAN LITERATURE. 

Among a surprising mass of rubbish from her pen 
there is here and there to be found a true gem. In her 
Contemplations, written apparently on the banks of the 
Merrimac at the flood tide of the year, we find the first 
poetry of the American landscape : 

" Sometime now past in the Autumnal tide, 

When Phoebus wanted but one hour to bed, 

The trees all nicely clad, yet void of pride, 
Were gilded o'er by his rich golden head. 

Their leaves and fruits seem'd painted, but was true 

Of green, of red, of yellow, mixed hew : 

Rapt were my sences at this delectable view." 

The surroundings of this early poetess were anything 
but inspiring. She was lame and of delicate health 
throughout her life. The mother of eight children, she 
wrote all her poems amid the hurry and care of multi- 
farious household duties. 

From Anne Bradstreet has descended a sturdy literary 
progeny. Holmes, Channing, R. H. Dana, Buckminster, 
and many other New England authors trace a lineal 
descent from this earliest singer of the new world. 

2. Michael Wiggles worth (1631-1715). 

"The Laureate of Puritanism." 

None can fully appreciate the theology of early New 
England who has not read the remarkable poem, The 

God's Contro- -*% °f I)oom ^ ~ tnat blazing, sulphurous 
versywith picture of the punishment of the wicked 

New England. r *■ 

Meat out of according to the ideals of Puritanism. 
the Eater. Itg author? Michael Wigglesworth, in the 

Doom. words of Mather, u a little feeble shadow 



THE FIRST COLONIAL PERIOD. 37 

of a man," had come with his parents to America in his 
seventh year, and after a course at Harvard, had settled 
over a church at Maiden, Massachusetts, where he at 
once commenced a most remarkable career as a poet. 
His Day of Doom, or a Poetical Description of the Great 
and Last Judgment, with a Short Discourse about Eter- 
nity, appearing in 1662, quickly went through nine 
editions in America and two in England. It became, 
in the words of Lowell, "the solace of every fireside, 
the flicker of the pine-knots by which it was conned 
perhaps adding a livelier relish to its premonitions of 
eternal combustion." 

Judged by the cold standards of to-day the book has 
little poetic merit. The sing-song of the verse, that so 
captivated its first readers, serves to create only a pass- 
ing smile, while we shudder at the narrow theology that 
could exult over burning infants and gloat over the 
moans of tortured sinners. A short extract will illus- 
trate its metre and spirit. 

" Then might you hear them rend and tear 

The air with their outcries ; 
The hideous noise of their sad voice 

Ascendent to the skies. 
They wring their hands, their caitiff hands, 

And gnash their teeth for terror ; 
They cry, they roar, for anguish sore, 

And gnaw their tongue for horror. 
But get away without delay ; 

Christ pities not your cry ; 
Depart to hell, there may you yell 

And roar eternally." 



III. 

THE SECOND COLONIAL PERIOD. 

1688-1765. 

1607. Virginia Colonial Isolation. — One of the most 

settled at 

Jamestown. striking things in our Colonial history is 

chusetts settled the remarkable isolation of the Colonies, in 

i623. yi New reference to each other, all through the 

UeTa?Dove S r et " Colonial Age. Although kindred in blood, 

1623. New speaking the same language and acknowl- 

York settled by r & & b 

the Dutch. edging the same sovereign, each Colony 

settled by Clay- was in reality a little nation by itself, with 

1634 Connecti- ^ s own peculiar laws, moneys, military 

cut settled. plans, and social usages. 

1636. Rhode Is- F ' 8 

land settled by At the end of the first period the Colo- 
Roger Williams. 

1638. Delaware nies were in three distinct groups : 

Swedes and 1. The New England Group. — Massa- 

1663-5. The chusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut, New 

Caroimas set- Hampshire. 

1664. NewJer- % 2 J he Middle Group. — New York, New 

sey settled by 

English and Jersey, Delaware, Pennsylvania. 

Swedes. 

1681. Pennsyi- 3. The Southern Group. — Maryland, 

wmfam Penn7 Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, 

Ssd?vfdS r - ^d Georgia. 

1733. Georgia Between the members of each group 

settled by Ogle- . -, 

thorpe. there was more or less intercourse, but 

between the groups there was almost none at all. 

38 



THE SECOND COLONIAL PERIOD. 39 

Loyalty to England. — Although the immigrant gen- 
eration passed from the field of action, and affairs came 
into the hands of those who called themselves " English- 
men" and yet had never been in England, loyalty to 
the mother land did not abate. Notwithstanding their 
isolation in regard to one another, all the Colonies were 
intensely true to what they called their " home across 
the sea." Even the New Englanders who had quarrelled 
with England to a degree that they could leave her 
forever, were proud to call themselves Englishmen, and 
regarded New England simply as a part of the old Eng- 
land which they had left. Whatever may be said to 
the contrary, the colonists did not dream of indepen- 
dence until the very close of the Colonial Age. They 
could complain of harsh treatment, and even resist a 
tyrannical governor, as did Bacon in Virginia in 1676, 
but they no more thought of independence from Great 
Britain than did the citizens of London. Franklin, as 
late as 1775, told Lord Chatham that in all his inter- 
course with all sorts of people in the Colonies he had 
never heard a desire to separate from England expressed. 
The negligence of Great Britain forced the Colonies to 
unite, and her injustice forced them to independence. 

The Second Colonial Period. — The Revo- 

1642-1727. 

lution of 1688, which forced the intolerant Isaac Newton. 
James II. to flee to France, and placed the DanM 7 DeFoe. 
protestant monarchs, William and Mary, 1667-1745. 

. „ Jonathan Swift. 

on the English throne, marks the end ot 1672 _i7i9 
the First Colonial Period. There was no Joseph Addison, 
change in the tone of the literary product Richard Steele. 



40 AMERICAN LITERATURE. 

1689-1761. to show that a new period had opened; 

Samuel Rich- . . . . 

ardson. indeed, the writings during the entire Colo- 

Henry Fielding. ni ^ Age are °f singular uniformity. The 
1728-1774. period stands rather for the birth of a new 

Oliver Gold- r 

smith. idea, one of wonderful meaning, on which 

1737-1794,, 

Edward Gibbon, our national and our literary history de- 

toofloS; pends, — the idea of Union. 

Crusoe. Scarcely three months from the time 

1740. Publica- J 

tion of Pamela, of his coronation, William declared war 

the first English 

Novel. against Louis XIV. of France, who was 

then meditating on a splendid course of conquest which 
aimed at nothing less than universal domain. 

The war known in history as King William's War 
was the American echo of the conflict that followed. 

New France or New England. — (Parkman's France 
and England in North America.) During the preceding 
period the French had left the English to hold the At- 
lantic coast, and had pushed up the St. Lawrence, 
through the Great Lakes and down the Mississippi, until, 
under the names of Louisiana and New York, they laid 
claim to fully one-half of the present territory of the 
United States. No sooner had war been declared than 
the English Colonies awoke to a realization that they 
were completely surrounded on the north and west by 
the French. Immediately the armies of New France 
began to press upon the English frontiers. It became 
evident that it was the ambition of France " to grasp the 
entire continent." 

The Second Colonial Period witnessed a desperate 
and bloody struggle between England and France for 



THE SECOND COLONIAL PERIOD. 41 

North America. Its outcome was of vast importance. 
Had France won, it would have changed the destiny of 
the new world. War followed war. Queen Anne's 
War, King George's War, and the final and decisive 
French and Indian War came rapidlv one H „_ „ T . 

x d 1692. Witch- 

af ter the Other. craft delusion 

at Salem. 

The lack of union among the thirteen 1689-1697. 
Colonies and the long unprotected border ^ William ' s 
gave the French a great advantage. As 1702-1713. 

, r. -n Queen Anne's 

these wars were but the echoes of European War. 
struggles, England had all that she could S n ^ 
manage at home. The Colonies soon found and s P ain - 

1 •, -. -. , 1 1744-1748. 

that they could not rely upon the mother King George's 
country, that they must fight for them- 1752 * The 
selves, whatever were the odds against adopTe^mthe 
them, or be pushed into the Atlantic. ? ri * is ^ d ? m ™~ 

' * ions, Sept. 3 be- 

Required Reading. — " The Story of the g e pt. 14, 
French and English Wars," in Parkman's Con- 1755. Brad- 
piracy o/Pontiac, I. 95-141. dock ' s defeat. 

1755. Lisbon 

Union. — Here was born the first real earth quake. 

.-.(.. . t, T 1757. Lord 

idea 01 union, — union against b ranee. It ciive wins 
was born of the neglect of England for her land. 
American offspring, it was nourished by JJ 63 Fr "nch and 
the foolish continental wars which she Indian War. 

. , , , . , . , . a • , 1763. The Con- 

mdulged in, wars which in America, at spiracyof 
least, were without results or glory. 

In 1690, delegates from Massachusetts, Plymouth, 
Connecticut, and New York had met in New York 
to concert measures against the French, and this had 
been the beginning of many similar conventions. The 



42 AMEBIC AW LITERATURE. 

tenacity of local ideas and aims, that had tended to 
keep the Colonies apart, vanished before a common 
danger. Although the Union was at first only a frail 
affair, not involving all the Colonies, and having no 
reference to anything but temporary results, it was 
significant. 

England had gratified her vanity by waging her wars 
with France and Spain, but she had unconsciously taught 
her Colonies two great secrets, — first, the strength of 
union, and second, the sturdy self-reliance which after- 
wards won for them their independence. 

A Transition Period. — The eighty-seven years of the 
Second Colonial Period witnessed great changes in the 
life and spirit of the Colonies. Old ideals were break- 
ing down on every hand. The clergy began gradually 
to lose their supreme power in intellectual affairs. The 
laymen were turning their minds to their worldly sur- 
roundings, and were fast losing the intense religious 
absorption of earlier days. Commerce began to flourish ; 
the cities of Boston, New York, and Philadelphia 
became busy centres of trade ; the shipping industry 
grew with wonderful vigor. The Colonial wars and the 
politics of the times, the struggles with charters and 
arbitrary governors, had all tended to turn the minds of 
the colonists from their souls to their bodies and their 
surroundings. Superstition was dying a natural death. 
Dr. Boylston successfully inoculated for small-pox in 
Boston, thus robbing this dread disease of much of its 
terrors. The witchcraft delusion, " that last spasm of 
expiring Puritanism," did much to do away with the 



THE SECOND COLONIAL PERIOD. 43 

belief in miracles and mysteries. On all sides the mists 
of prejudice and intolerance were clearing away, and the 
east was red with the dawning of a new morning. 

The Newspaper was an important agent 1663< First 
in the intellectual emancipation of the ^^ h newS " 
Colonies. The first attempt at -journalism 1711-1714. Addi- 

r J sons Spectator 

was made in 1690, when a little publica- (Loudon). 

, , , ^ 1690. Public 

tion, more a pamphlet than a newspaper, Occurrences. 
was issued in Boston under the name JJJJVews-z^ 5 " 

Public Occurrences. This was intended to ter - 

1719. Boston 
be issued monthly, but it was quickly sup- Gazette. 

pressed by the General Court. The Boston weekly Mercury. 
News-Letter followed in 1704, and in 1719 1725 - First . 

newspaper in 

came the Boston Gazette, printed, though New York. 
not edited, by James Franklin, the brother of Benjamin 
Franklin. The American Weekly Mercury, of Philadel- 
phia, was established one day later. The New England 
Courant, famous from its connection with the early 
career of Benjamin Franklin, followed next in order, 
in 1721. It was edited as well as printed by James 
Franklin. " I remember," says the Autobiography, " his 
being dissuaded by some of his friends from the under- 
taking, as not likely to succeed, one newspaper being, 
in their judgment, enough for America." Nevertheless, 
newspapers multiplied rapidly, until at the close of the 
period there were in all the Colonies at least forty. In 
1741, Franklin established in Philadelphia The G-eneral 
Magazine and Historical Chronicle for All the British 
Provinces in America. Although published only six 
months, and containing little of literary value, this paper 



44 AMERICAN LITERATURE. 

is of interest, since it was the first attempt in America 
to found a literary magazine. 

The Literature of the Period does not much differ from 
that produced during the first era. It was still prevail- 
ingly religious in its character. The poetry clumsily 
followed the artificial models of the school of Pope and 
was for the most part unnatural and worthless. The 
period, however, produced three writers of high rank, 
— Cotton Mather, Jonathan Edwards, and Benjamin 
Franklin, the last two attaining to international renown. 
These, with Samuel Sewall and Governor Hutchinson, 
are all that need be mentioned in a brief history of the 
period. 

1. Samuel Sewall (1662-1730). 

"The Puritan Pepys." 

The work done by Bradford and Winthrop during 
the early days of New England was continued by Samuel 
The Selling of Sewall, who kept a faithful journal between 
mX; the years 1673 and 1739. Sewall was born 

1673-1739. j n England, coming with his father to 

America while yet a boy, and after a course at Harvard, 
settled down to the law. He married the daughter of 
John Hull, the rich mint master of Massachusetts, who 
gave him a fortune. In time he became the Chief 
Justice of Massachusetts. During the witchcraft trials 
at Salem, he was a conspicuous figure among the judges, 
but, becoming convinced of his error later in life, he did 
what he could to atone for his part in the miserable 
affair by making a public confession in church. 



THE SECOND COLONIAL PERIOD. 45 

Se wall's diary, which is now in the hands of the 
Massachusetts Historical Association, is a minute record 
of the domestic and public life of its author and con- 
tains much valuable historical matter. It covers the 
period of the Quaker persecutions, King Philip's War, 
and the English Revolution of 1688. 

Justice Sewall was a strong writer on many topics. 
He was one of the first to protest against African 
slavery. His little tract, The Selling of Joseph, a 
powerful and impassioned plea against this evil, is 
still readable. 

Required Reading. — Whittier's "Prophecy of Samuel 
Sewall"; Hawthorne's "The Pine Tree Shillings," in Grand- 
father's Chair, i. ch. 6. See also "A Puritan Pepys," with ex- 
tracts from the diary, in Lodge's Studies in History, p. 21. 



2. Cotton Mather (1663-1728). 

"In him the Puritan Age culminated and came to an end." — 
Greenough White. 

Life (by his son Samuel, 1729, by W. B. O. Peabody 
in Sparks' American Biography; by A. P. Marvin; by 
Barrett Wendell, 1891). For four genera- Memorable 
tions the Mather family was prominent in wonders of 'the 
the intellectual history of New England, ^visible World. 

J ° Essays to do 

Richard Mather, its founder, had left his Good. 
church in England rather than wear a chksti 

,. ii« ji,ii in Americana. 

surplice ; had migrated to the new world, 

and had left as his monument his work on the old Bag 

Psalm Book. But the star of the Mather family was 



46 AMERICAN LITERATURE. 

to increase in brilliancy with each generation. An old 
epitaph records that 

" Under this stone lies Richard Mather, 
Who had a son greater than his father, 
And eke a grandson greater than either." 

The son was Increase Mather, renowned for learning 
and eloquence, president of Harvard College from 
1685 to 1701, pastor of the old North Church until 
his death; while the grandson, the crowning glory of 
all, was Cotton Mather, " the literary behemoth of New 
England in our Colonial Era." No man was ever more 
fortunate in his ancestry. His maternal grandfather 
was the famous Boston divine, John Cotton. From 
his ancestors on both sides he inherited all the earnest- 
ness and obstinacy, all the fine intellect as well as the 
superstition and gloom of the early Puritans. He was 
the quintessence of Puritanism. 

The stories of Cotton Mather's wonderful precocity 
sound strangely unreal in these days. He seems never 
to have had a childhood. Hebrew and Greek and 
Latin early became to him as his mother tongue. At 
fifteen he had received his degree at Harvard College 
with the highest possible honors of the institution, and 
at twenty-two he was his father's assistant in the old 
North Church, succeeding him in due time as pastor. 

The Witchcraft Delusion. — Mather's life was one of 
ceaseless activity. "To preach seventy sermons in 
public," observes one writer, "forty more in private, 
keep thirty vigils and sixty fasts, and still have time 
for persecuting witches, was nothing unusual for him 



THE SECOND COLONIAL PERIOD. 47 

to do in a year." As a voluminous pamphleteer he has 
had few equals, his published works numbering nearly 
four hundred. He is, perhaps, most widely known 
from his connection with the Salem witchcraft de- 
lusion of 1692. To Cotton Mather evil spirits and 
" unlovely demons " in the shape of men and women 
were as real as were the facts of his daily life. His 
Memorable Providences Relating to Witchcraft, written 
apparently with perfect honesty and published in 1789, 
served as a fan for the fire smouldering in Salem. 
Four years later, when men like Justice Sewall were 
bitterly repenting of their part in the terrible tragedy, 
Mather published his Wonders of the Invisible World, 
a cold-blooded account of the trials and executions at 
Salem, every word pregnant with the belief that devils 
and not human beings had been dealt with. That he 
was intensely honest in all this need not be said. His 
terrible convictions triumphing over his naturally kind 
heart would not have allowed him to hesitate even had 
the evidence involved his son Samuel. 

The Magnalia. — (Richardson, 1. 131-137, with extract.) 
In 1702 Mather's magnum opus, the ponderous Magnalia 
Christi Americana, was printed in London. "It is a 
strange, pedantic history," says Hawthorne, "in which 
true events and real personages move before the reader 
with the dreamy aspect which they wore in Cotton 
Mather's singular mind." The text fairly groans with 
quotations and citations from every known and unknown 
tongue, with allusions to quaint and forgotten history 
dragged in by force to display the author's amazing 
erudition. 



48 AMERICAN LITERATURE. 

Mather intended this work to be the complete and 
final history of his time. He failed simply because he 
lacked the indispensable qualifications of the historian. 
He was intensely prejudiced. His horizon, in spite 
of his education, was a narrow one. Notwithstanding 
his wonderful opportunity in a time when he might 
have verified his every statement by documents and 
sources of history now lost forever, he must be read 
with suspicion. Rather than tell the simple tale of his 
times he preferred to display his classical verbiage and 
lose himself in a chaos of visions. The Magnolia, how- 
ever, is not wholly without value. " There are in it 
lodged many single facts of the utmost value, personal 
reminiscences, social gossip, snatches of conversation, 
touches of description, traits of character and life that 
can be found nowhere else." — Tyler. 

One little book of Mather's should not be overlooked. 
Franklin, in a letter to Samuel Mather, once declared 
that the little volume, Essays to do Good, had been one 
of the strongest influences for good that had ever 
affected his life. 

Required Reading. — Hawthorne's Grandfather's Chair, ii. 
chs. 4 and 5. Whittier's " Garrison of Cape Ann." Longfellow's 
" The Phantom Ship." 

3. Jonathan Edwards (1703-1758). 
"The most eminent of American metaphysicians." — Richardson. 

The representative character of the Second Colonial 
Period, and by all means the most conspicuous figure 
in our early intellectual history, was Jonathan Edwards. 



THE SECOND COLONIAL PERIOD. 49 

In a transition period he stood in a curious way be- 
tween the new and the old. He clung fast to the old 
Puritan ideas of original sin, of predestina- A Treatise 
tion and the terrors of punishment at the the Religious 
hands of an angry God. His awful idea An inquiry into 
of God can be shown in a brief quotation, the Will. 

" The God that holds you over the pit of hell, much as one holds 
a spider or some loathsome insect over the fire, abhors you and is 
dreadfully provoked. ... If you cry to God to pity you, he will 
be so far from pitying you in your doleful case that he will only 
tread you under foot. ... He will crush out your blood and 
make it fly, and it shall be sprinkled on all his garments so as to 
stain all his raiment." — Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God. 

And yet, Edwards was exceedingly sensitive and 
susceptible to new ideas. In an unscientific age he 
was an eager student of the laws of nature. He sought 
earnestly for the light wherever it might lead him. In 
his metaphysical work so far was he ahead of his age 
that his writings are regarded as authorities in modern 
times. His searching mind and catholic soul were ever 
ready to recognize truth, no matter what havoc it might 
play with preconceived notions. 

Life (by Samuel Hopkins ; by Sereno Edwards 
Dwight; by A. V. G. Allen). Edwards was born at 
East Winsor, Connecticut, in 1703. While a mere 
youth, he delighted in philosophy, writing, at the age 
of thirteen, profound letters concerning the nature of 
the soul, and the exposition of the theology of Calvin. 

While a sophomore at Yale College, he chanced upon 
a copy of Locke's Essay on the Human Understanding. 



50 AMERICAN LITERATURE. 

He tells us that he read this with a greater delight 
" than the most greedy miser finds when gathering up 
handfuls of silver and gold from some newly disclosed 
treasure." This eager thirst for knowledge never left 
him. He trained himself to read, pen in hand, equal- 
ling in energy and steadfast purpose the studious Cotton 
Mather of an earlier generation. Graduating at Yale 
in 1720, he was for a short time a tutor in the college, 
soon afterwards becoming a pastor, first in the church 
at Northampton, Massachusetts, and then among the 
Stockbridge Indians. Three months before his death 
he became president of Princeton College. 

Although, like most of the clergymen of his day, 
Edwards was a voluminous writer, his works belong to 
theology and metaphysics rather than to literature. 
However, " there is an intensity," notes Professor 
Beers, "and a spiritual elevation about them, apart 
from the profundity and acuteness of the thought, 
which lift them here and there into the finer ether 
of purely emotional or imaginative art." 

The Freedom of the Will. — Although Edwards pub- 
lished thirty-six different books, his fame chiefly depends 
upon one master work bearing the formidable title : 

" A Careful and Strict Inquiry into the Modern Notion of that 
Freedom of Will which is Supposed to be Essential to Moral Agency, 
Virtue and Vice, Reward and Punishment, Praise and Blame." 

This learned metaphysical discussion supports the 
doctrine laid down by Calvin, that the will is not self- 
determined and free, that man does not act by virtue 
of a free choice, but in accordance with the will of a 



THE SECOND COLONIAL PERIOD. 51 

supreme ruling power. The book is as abstruse to the 
average reader as a treatise on the higher mathematics. 
It has furnished a field for much argument from the 
time of its first appearance until the present. Some 
of the profoundest metaphysicians of the century have 
assailed it, but it seems to be impregnable. 

In curious contrast with this ponderous work stands 
the little volume A Treatise on the Religious Affections, 
full of sweetness and rapt spiritual character, and often 
very near to poetry in its lofty conceptions and gentle 
spirit. 

Eequiked Reading. — Selections from Holmes' " Jonathan 
Edwards," in Pages from an Old Volume of Life. 



4. Thomas Hutchinson (1711-1780). 

" For intellectual gifts and accomplishments, he stood far above all 
the other Colonial governors." — John Fiske. 

Life. — (No life of Governor Hutchinson has ever been 
written. The best source of information concerning 
him is his Diary and Letters, first pub- 
lished in 1884-1886. See also Hosmer's Massachusetts 
Samuel Adams.) 162(KL774. 

All of the Colonial governors of Massa- papr and 

° Letters. 

chusetts seem to have been impressed with 
the idea that they must give to posterity a faithful 
record of all their doings. Thomas Hutchinson, the last 
of the governors under British rule, conceived the idea 
of writing a complete history of the province from the 
time of the first settlement until the Revolutionary 



52 AMERICAN LITERATURE. 

War. To this he gave the title The History of Massa- 
chusetts Bay, publishing it in three volumes, the last one 
appearing one year after the author's death. 

Governor Hutchinson was fortunate in respect to 
materials for his work, having access to many documents 
and sources of information long since lost. From these 
he compiled, with excellent judgment and rare scholar- 
ship, a work which will always be regarded as the highest 
authority. The author was not pleasing to the people 
of the Colonies on account of his Tory principles, and 
for this reason his history never became a popular one. 

Required Reading. — Selections from Hutchinson's History. 



IV. 
BENJAMIN FRANKLIN. 

1706-1790. 

" The first philosopher and indeed the first great man of letters for 
whom we are beholden to America." — David Hume. 

Pennsylvania. — (See Goldwin Smith's On the Foun- 
dation of the American Colonies, 26 ; also Tyler, II., 225.) 
The life and work of Benjamin Franklin Autobiography. 
turn our eyes for the first time toward Father Abra- 

J ham s speech. 

the Middle Colonies. The Plantation of Essays and 
Pennsylvania, with which his life after the works'mio 
age of seventeen was identified, has in its vo umes ' 
history much to remind one of early New England. It 
was settled by those who came for conscience' sake. 
The Quakers were as zealous in their efforts to found 
schools as were the men of Massachusetts; they were 
as unworldly, as serious, and as intellectual as were the 
Puritans themselves. Unlike the Puritans, they were 
not persecutors, nor did they ever interfere with the 
liberty of the press. 

Early in the eighteenth century, about the time that 
Franklin appeared in Philadelphia, that city was the 
centre of literary activity second only to Boston. It is 
said that there are now in the old library of Philadel- 
phia, " four hundred and twenty-five original books and 

53 



54 AMERICAN LITERATURE. 

pamphlets that were printed in that city before the 
Revolution." — Wharton's Prov. Lit of Pa. 

Thomas Godfrey. — (Tyler, 244-251, with extract.) 
Most of these early writers have been forgotten though 
some have found immortality in The Autobiography. 
Only one, Thomas Godfrey, son of the Thomas Godfrey 
mentioned by Franklin, deserves consideration here! 
Born in Philadelphia in 1736, he became a watchmaker 
and a writer of verses, dying at the early age of twenty- 
eight. Two years after his death there appeared in 
Philadelphia his collected verses entitled Juvenile Poems 
on Various Subjects; with the Prince of Parthia, a 
Tragedy. The poems possess little merit, but the drama 
is a strong production. It being the first dramatic com- 
position produced in America, its young author enjoys 
the distinction of being the father of the American 
drama. 

Life of Franklin. — (Biographies of Franklin in Eng- 
lish, French, and German, and studies of his life-work 
and character, by many eminent writers, are numerous. 
Any one wishing the complete list should consult The 
Franklin Bibliography of all the works written by or 
relating to Franklin, by Paul L. Ford, Brooklyn, 1889. 
The most helpful Lives for school use are by Jared 
Sparks, 1844; by James Parton, 1864; by John T. 
Morse, Jr., 1890. See also Everett's Boyhood and Youth 
of Franklin, and Hale's Franklin in France, 1877. The 
most useful books, however, to the student of American 
Literature are The Autobiography, .completed by Bige- 
low, and Benjamin Franklin as a Man of Letters, by 



BENJAMIN FRANKLIN 55 

J. Bach McMaster, 1890.) Whoever attempts, even 
briefly, to tell the story of Franklin's life, does so 
under great disadvantages, for a comparison with The 
Autobiography is sure to result. The biographer can do 
no better than quote frequently from this work. 

The Early Life of Franklin. — "My father married young, and 
carried his wife, with three children, to New England about 1685. 
. . . His family increased to seventeen, of whom I remember to 
have seen thirteen sitting together at his table, who all grew up to 
years of maturity and were married. I was the youngest son and 
the youngest of all the children except two daughters. I was born 
in Boston in New England. My mother, the second wife of my 
father, was Abiah Folger, daughter of Peter Folger, one of the 
first settlers of New England, of whom honorable mention is made 
by Cotton Mather in his ecclesiastical history of that country, 
entitled Magnolia Christi Americana. . . . My elder brothers 
were all put apprentices to different trades. I was put to the 
grammar school at eight years of age, my father intending to 
devote me, as the tithe of his sons, to the service of the church. 
My early readiness in learning to read, which must have been very 
early, as I do not remember when I could not read, and the opinion 
of all his friends that I should certainly make a good scholar, 
encouraged him in this purpose of his. My uncle Benjamin, too, 
approved of it, and proposed to give me his short-hand volumes of 
sermons, to set up with, if I would learn his short-hand. I con- 
tinued however at the grammar school rather less than a year, 
though in that time I had risen gradually from the middle class of 
that year to be at the head of the same class, and was removed 
into the next class, whence I was to be placed in the third at the 
end' of the year. 

" But my father, burdened with a numerous family, was unable, 
without inconvenience, to support the expense of a college educa- 
tion. Considering, moreover, as he said to one of his friends in 
my presence, the little encouragement that line afforded to those 
educated for it, he gave up his first intentions, took me from the 
grammar school and sent me to a school for writing and arithmetic 



56 AMERICAN LITERATURE. 

kept by a then famous man, Mr. George Brownwell. . . . Under 
him I learned to write a good hand pretty soon, but failed entirely 
in arithmetic. At ten years old I was taken to help my father in 
his business, which was that of a tallow chandler and soap boiler, 
a business to which he was not bred, but had assumed on his arri- 
val in New England, because he found that his dyeing trade being 
in little request, would not maintain his family. Accordingly, I 
was employed in cutting wicks for the candles, filling the moulds 
for cast candles, attending to the shop, going of errands, etc. . . . 
I continued thus in my father's business for two years, that is till I 
was twelve years old ; and my brother John, who was bred to that 
business, having left my father, married and set up in business in 
Rhode Island, there was every appearance that I was destined to 
supply his place and become a tallow chandler. But my dislike to 
the trade continuing, my father had apprehension that, if he did 
not put me to one more agreeable, I should break loose and go to 
sea as »my brother Josiah had done, to his great vexation. . . . 
From my infancy I was passionately fond of reading and all the 
money that came into my hands was laid out in the purchasing of 
books. . . . This bookish inclination at length determined my 
father to make me a printer, though ne had already one son James 
of that profession. In 1717 my brother James returned from 
England with a press and letters to set up his business in Boston. 
I liked it much better than that of my father, but still had a 
hankering for the sea. To prevent the apprehended effect of such 
an inclination, my father was impatient to have me bound to my 
brother. I stood out some time, but at last was persuaded and 
signed the indenture when I was but twelve years old." — The 
A utobiography. 

In Philadelphia. — Franklin's story of his early at- 
tempts at self -improvement should be read by every 
youth. In his brother's office he learned rapidly, but 
he seems to have had numerous difficulties with his 
master, and at the age of seventeen we find him run- 
ning away to New York. Not finding work there, he 
proceeded to Philadelphia. The next year he was 



BENJAMIN FRANKLIN. 57 

lured by Sir William Keith to London, and soon found 
himself penniless. Here he worked with great indus- 
try for two years, in which time he succeeded in earn- 
ing enough to buy a complete printing outfit, enabling 
him at the age of twenty to settle in Philadelphia in an 
office of his own. In 1730, he bought the Pennsylvania 
Gazette, and from this time his progress toward fame 
and power was very rapid. His paper exerted a wide 
influence both in literature and politics. It strongly 
advocated everything that promised good to the public. 
Through Franklin's influence a public library was 
started in Philadelphia; he founded the American 
Philosophical Society and the University of Pennsyl- 
vania. In 1753, he was appointed Postmaster General 
for the Colonies, when he at once revolutionized the 
mail service of the times. He spared no labor for 
the public good. At one time he made a carriage 
journey of six months through the Colonies, visiting 
every office. He was sent several times to England as 
ambassador to the king in behalf of the Colonies, and, 
in 1766, secured the repeal of the obnoxious Stamp 
Act. He was a member of the Continental Congress 
of 1775, and of all the important conventions until 
after the adoption of the Constitution. During the 
Revolution he was minister to England and France, at 
which time his services can hardly be overestimated. 
The complete biography of this remarkable man is in 
reality a history of the most important epoch in our 
nation's life. He died in Philadelphia at the ripe age 
of eighty-four. 



58 AMERICAN LITERATURE. 

Poor Richard's Almanac. — (See Parton's Life and 
Times of Benjamin Eranklin, L, 227-240.) Franklin 
did more for literature as an influence than as an actual 
producer. He was only incidentally a man of letters. 
He was greater as a statesman, a diplomatist, a scien- 
tist, than as a writer, and yet his literary productions 
are of great value. Perhaps the best known of all his 
writings are the series of essays and proverbs which 
appeared originally in Poor Richard's Almanac, an 
annual publication which was first issued in 1833, bear- 
ing the pseudonym "Richard Saunders, Philomath," 
and which was continued with great success for nearly 
quarter of a century. 

"I endeavored to make it both entertaining and useful; and it 
accordingly came to be in such demand that I reaped considerable 
profit from it, vending annually near ten thousand. And observ- 
ing that it was generally read, scarce any neighborhood being with- 
out it, I considered it as a proper vehicle for conveying instruction 
among the common people, who bought scarcely any other books ; 
I therefore filled all the little spaces that occurred between the 
remarkable days in the calendar with proverbial sentences, chiefly 
such as inculcated industry and frugality as the means of procur- 
ing wealth, and thereby securing virtue ; it being more difficult for 
a man in want to act always honestly, as, to use here one of those 
proverbs, ' it is hard for an empty sack to stand upright.' These 
proverbs, which contain the wisdom of many ages and nations, I 
assembled and formed into a connected discourse, prefixed to the 
almanac of 1757, as the harangue of a wise old man to the people 
attending an auction. The bringing all these scattered counsels 
thus into a focus enabled them to make greater impression. The 
piece, being universally approved, was copied in all the newspapers 
of the continent ; reprinted in Britain on a broadside to be stuck up 
in houses ; two translations were made of it in French, and great 
numbers bought by the clergy and gentry to distribute gratis 
among their poor parishioners and tenants." — The Autobiography. 



BENJAMIN FRANKLIN. 59 

Franklin's proverbs have become household words. 
Every one has heard from childhood, 

" Early to bed and early to rise makes a man healthy, wealthy, 
and wise." 

" God helps them that help themselves." 

" Keep thy shop, and thy shop will keep thee." 

" Three removes are as bad as a fire." 

Required Reading. — " Father Abraham's Speech." See also 
Riverside Literature Series, No. 24. For i'ac-simile of a page of Poor 
Richard's Almanac, see Fiske's History of the United States, p. 186. 

The Autobiography. 

"The best Autobiography in the language." 
"Franklin is his own Boswell." — Lawrence. 

This work, written in the seventy-ninth year of his 
age, is Franklin's chief contribution to literature. It 
tells the story of his life up to the year 1757. After 
reading it one has a perfect picture of its author. It 
has become the world's model for an autobiography. 
Nowhere in literature can we find a more complete open- 
ing of an author's heart to the public. Its popularity 
has been wonderful, fifty editions having been disposed 
of in this country alone. 

The history of the manuscript of the work has been 
an interesting one. The grandson of Franklin, who 
was a Tory pensioner, caused the work to be suppressed. 
It was printed, however, in French in 1791, but not till 
1817 was it published in the original English. In John 
Bigelow's edition of the book the original spelling is 
retained, and the story is told exactly as Franklin 
wrote it. 



60 AMERICAN LITERATURE. 

A STUDY OF THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY. 

(After a Careful Reading of as Much of it as Possible.) 

Give reason for each statement : 

I. Words. — What percentage have more than two sylla- 
bles ? Are there many of Latin derivation ? of Saxon ? 
Are any used that might be dropped ? If so, give example. 
Does he use commonplace words, sometimes not elegant 
ones ? Are his words on the whole well chosen ? Where 
did he get his command of words ? 

II. Sentences. — Long and involved ? Periodic ? Bal- 
anced ? Short and clear ? Obscure ? Or yielding their 
meaning easily ? What adjectives describe Franklin's sen- 
tences ? 

III. Style. — Interesting or dry ? Give example to 
prove statement. Is it ornamental ? Are there figures 
of speech ? Give example. Are there many quotations 
from other authors ? Allusions to history which must be 
looked up to be understood ? Are there words and phrases 
from other languages ? Chiefly from what language ? 
What adjectives describe his style ? From whom did he 
learn it, judging from his own account ? How does it com- 
pare with Pilgrim 's Progress, Gulliver's Travels, and Robin- 
son Crusoe f 

IV. Subject Matter. — (a) What purpose had the 
author in writing the book ? To instruct ? To magnify 
himself ? To produce a literary work ? To reward friends 
and punish enemies ? To discover the moral of life ? If 
none of these, what was his object ? (b) Is the story im- 
portant ? How much of the story of the times is inci- 
dentally told? How important an epoch did it cover? 
What leading historical events are touched? (c) Is it 
complete ? Is the author honest ? Is anything concealed ? 



BENJAMIN FRANKLIN. 61 

Does lie omit to mention when he was wrong ? Is he 
proud of his faults ? 

V. Why has the book had such a wonderful popularity ? 

Essays and Papers. — The remainder of Franklin's 
literary work consists of essays on various topics, The 
Busybody, a series after the style of Addison, being 
prominent ; papers on scientific topics, political essays, 
and letters. Some of his lighter work, like " The 
Whistle," and " Dialogue between Franklin and the 
Gout," have been very popular. 

Franklin's Versatility. — Franklin is the best example 
of a self-made man that history affords. No Amer- 
ican has ever achieved greatness in so many direc- 
tions. He ornamented everything that he touched, 
whether science, literature, invention, or statescraft. 
In science he made the discovery that electricity is the 
cause of lightning, and he wrote papers on electricity 
and kindred subjects that won the admiration of Europe. 
He invented the stove, lightning rod, and water organ. 
He organized the first police force, and the first fire 
company. His name is signed to all the great docu- 
ments of our early history. In addition to all this, he 
was one of the first statesmen of his age and perhaps the 
ablest representative our nation has ever sent abroad. 



THE REVOLUTIONARY PERIOD. 

1765-1812. 

From the Stamp Act Congress to the Second War with 
England. 

Colonial Union. — We have already seen that during 
the preceding period a new idea had been steadily grow- 
ing throughout the plantations of America, — an idea 
undreamed of in earlier days. The Colonies had been 
settled at different times and for widely different rea- 
sons. The primary motive of many of them had been 
to seek isolation, to found a new order of things in a 
corner of the earth. The mere suggestion of a union 
with the Colony of Pennsylvania, or indeed with any 
other plantation, would have made a Massachusetts 
Puritan open wide his eyes in amazement. 

But the thirteen Colonies represented England's share 
of the great Continent of North America, and, as viewed 
from across a thousand leagues of ocean, they appeared 
rather as one vast possession settled in thirteen places, 
than as thirteen units with little connection. British 
policy was ever in advance of Colonial thought. Eng- 
land had recognized her American possessions as a unit 
almost from the beginning, passing the first of the 
Navigation Acts as early as 1651. From this time 

62 



THE REVOLUTIONARY PERIOD. 63 

onward, all of that series of selfish commercial laws, 
familiar to the student of our early history, were passed 
by the British Ministry to affect the Colonies as a whole. 
To protest successfully against such laws required co- 
operation. A common grievance furnished a bond of sym- 
pathy. After all, the Colonists were brothers, and blood 
told. It is not hard to see that all through the Colo- 
nial age almost every circumstance seemed destined to 
draw the Colonies nearer together, and that the neces- 
sity for union came ever from English interference. 

The Growth of New Ideas. — Under the press of new 
problems the first motives that had led pilgrims to the 
New World were beginning to be forgotten. Early 
prejudices were growing dim. The tyranny of royal 
governors had forced upon the Colonists many a lesson 
in politics. The French wars, besides bringing the differ- 
ent sections into contact, had shown the people their 
strength and their weakness. The oppression of Eng- 
land's commercial policy had created a bond of sympathy 
between Colonies that previously had been strangers to 
each other. Other agencies were at work which need 
not be enumerated, and altogether it is not strange that 
the idea of a permanent union should have entered into 
the minds of some. William Penn had suggested such 
an idea in 1697; Daniel Cox of New Jersey had discussed 
its advantages in 1722 ; Franklin, in the Albany Con- 
vention of 1754, held at the opening of the French and 
Indian War, where most of the New England and Mid- 
dle Colonies were represented, had proposed " a plan for 
the union of all the Colonies under one government." 



64 AMERICAN LITERATURE. 

But this plan had been rejected both by the English and 
the Americans, each regarding it as giving the other too 
much power. 

Suggested Reading. — Franklin's Plan of Union. Old South 
Leaflets. 

The Year 1765. — Union was finally forced upon the 
Colonies. In 1765 came the obnoxious Stamp Act, at 
which the indignation at British injustice that had been 
increasing for half a century burst into flame from New 
Hampshire to Georgia. The New York Convention of 
1765 where representatives from nine different Colonies 
1763 Th me ^ * n assem ^ )i y was the result. It is sig- 

Treaty of Paris n i ncan t that many of the leading men of 

ending the J ° 

French and in- America, men who were to stand shoulder 

dian War. 

1765. The to shoulder in the great contest for liberty 

Stamp Act. , . . . . 

The Albany which was soon to come, here met each 

Patrick Henry's other as strangers. This was the first 

gmfa. m ir " American Congress. It came to an end with 

sInt'to T Ma°sS- the Stam P Act > which gave it birth. Nine 

cimsetts. years i a t er? a fter the Boston Port Bill and 

1770. Boston . . ^ T 

Massacre. the act subverting the charter 01 Massa- 

Tea 'party. t0n chusetts, the famous Continental Congress 

p 74 ' "Rni° ston me ^ * n Philadelphia. All prejudices were 

Continental forgotten. A common danger made Puri- 

Congress. ° ° 

1775. April 19. tan and Quaker meet as brothers. Vir- 
ington and Con- ginia ordered that the day on which the 
Boston Port Bill went into effect should 
be kept as a day of fasting and prayer. 

The Continental Congress was designed to meet only 
the crisis at hand. Had the grievances been withdrawn, 



THE REVOLUTIONARY PERIOD. 65 

it would have shared the fate of the Stamp Act Con- 
gress, and no permanent union would have been con- 
summated. 

The Spirit of the Age. — The story of the Revolution 
need not be told, for every American is familiar with 
this important and desperate struggle. It was our 
Heroic Age. Compelled by force of circumstance, the 
Colonists turned the old Puritan earnestness from re- 
ligion to war and politics. The magnificent training, 
the self-control, the hardy endurance, and the self- 
reliance, that a century and a half of frontier life, with 
its struggle with rocky fields and savage men and 
beasts, had developed, stood them in good stead now. 
They put all of their mighty energy and unconquerable 
will into the contest, but it was a task to discourage the 
stoutest heart. 

" These are the times that try men's souls," wrote Thomas Paine 
in 1776. " The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in 
this crisis, shrink from the service of his country ; but he that 
stands it now deserves the love and thanks of man and woman." 

Out of this furnace came the pure gold of our national 
character. It made our government and our literature 
possible. When the struggle was over, the discordant 
voices of Colonial days, and local prejudices, and ideals, 
were all blended into one great, homogeneous whole. 

The Literature of the Age. — The spirit of the age 
had a powerful influence upon its literary product. Po- 
lemics gave place to politics. Dry theologi- g 70 ^ -17 ^^. 
cal arguments and pamphlet sermons, gave son - 
way to burning oratory and the docu- Thomas Gray. 



66 AMERICAN LITERATURE. 

1729-1797. ments and arguments of statesmen. As 

Edmund Burke. . , , 

1728-1774. m the last period, the literature, since it 

smith! ° was written for purely practical ends, is 

S^ 1 " 1800 - valuable now only so far as it gives us a 

William Cow- J & 

per. knowledge of the stirring days in which it 

Robert Burns, was produced. American literature writ- 
wmiam 6 pitt * en ^ or ^ s own sa ^ e was aimos ^ unknown. 
Great CoS-' Jt was not until the Nineteenth Century 
moner." ^^ fairly begun that Irving, the first 

American man of letters, appeared, and the dawn of 
American literature began to brighten. 

Three Periods. — (An excellent bibliography of the 
authorities on the American Revolution is contained in 
Winsor's Handbook of the American Revolution. The 
same author's History of America contains an exhaustive 
descriptive bibliography of manuscript sources and 
printed authorities on United States history. The best 
single history of the period is undoubtedly Fiske's 
American Revolution. Among other authorities may be 
mentioned Green's Historical View of the American 
Revolution; Lossing's Field Book of the Revolution; 
Frank Moore's Diary of the American Revolution, a col- 
lection of sources of history ; Frothingham's Rise of the 
Republic, and the biographies and writings of Washing- 
ton and all other participators in the war. The most 
valuable and interesting book for young people is, with- 
out question, Fiske's War of Independence.*) The Revo- 
lutionary Age may be subdivided into three distinct 
periods (The Period of Remonstrance, 1765-1775 ; the 
Period oiHesistance, 1775-1783 ;\ and the Period of 



THE REVOLUTIONARY PERIOD. 67 

Reconstruction, 1783-1812. The last date, however, is 
a purely arbitrary one. 



Y, 



I. PERIOD OF REMONSTRANCE. 

1765-1775. 



—The year 1765, that witnessed the Stamp Act Con- 
gress, the first organized attempt of any magnitude to 
protest against the measures of Great Britain, marks the 
opening of a new era. Viewed from a literary stand- 
point, the period is unimportant, although it is marked 
by the appearance of several orators of great brilliancy. 
That orators always precede revolution has been shown 
in every great uprising of the American people. The 
pre-Revolutionary orators rely for their fame chiefly upon 
tradition. Their work to a large degree has been lost. 
There were no reporters at those early gatherings of the 
patriots to catch the words that fell burning from the 
speakers' lips, and the orators of those stirring times had 
other things to do than record their own words for the 
use of posterity. Nevertheless, from the fragments that 
have come down to us and from the testimony of con- 
temporaries, we know that the orations of these men 
must have been full of intensity and fire, and that many 
of them deserve a place among the masterpieces of the 
world. V""" 

1. Samuel Adams (1722-1803). 

" He, better than any one else, may be taken as a representative of 
the people of New England and of the spirit with which they engaged 
in the Eevolutionary struggle." — Hawthorne. 

Life (by W. V. Wells, 1865 ; by J. K. Hosmer, 1885. 



68 AMERICAN LITERATURE. 

Both of these books are of great value, giving vivid and 
authentic pictures of all the men and events of the times 
of which they treat. For a scholarly study of Samuel 
Adams and his work, see Johns Hopkins University 
Studies, II., 207. See also Hezekiah Butterworth's 
Patriot Schoolmaster, 1894, a book of interest to the 
young). So zealous a fighter for Colonial rights was 
this stout-hearted old patriot in the stormy days pre- 
ceding the Revolution, that he gained the distinction, at 
the time of the Amnesty of 1774, of being the only 
man, Hancock excepted, that England could not pardon. 
A native of Boston, a member of the Harvard class of 
1740, a prominent figure in the Continental Congress, a 
signer of the Declaration of Independence, and for two 
years governor of Massachusetts, — such are the main 
facts in the life of Samuel Adams. It is as an orator 
that he deserves mention in a history of American litera- 
ture, though only fragments of his fiery oratory have 
come down to us. Tradition, however, mentions him as 
a speaker to be compared with Otis and Quincy. The 
writings of Samuel Adams have never been collected. 

Required Reading. — Grandfathers Chair, iii. 6. 

2. James Otis (1725-1783). 
" The Patrick Henry of New England." 

In 1761, after the act of Parliament restricting all 
manufacturing in the Colonies and all trade with other 
nations and even with the plantations, a question arose 
in the Supreme Court of Massachusetts as to the legal 



THE REVOLUTIONARY PERIOD. 69 

right of Parliament to bind the Colonies to such an 
extent. The investigation of this case, which involved 
the very questions that were afterwards to _. ,. ,. 

J u Vindication of 

be settled by arms, was conducted for the the Conduct of 

J the House of 

Crown by the King's Attorney General, Representa- 

J & . tives. 1762. 

and for the Colonies by James Otis, Rights of the 

yy/r 1 i i 1 T 1 BHUsh ColO~ 

a young Massachusetts lawyer. J onn n i es asserted. 

Adams, who was a witness of the trial, ™tideratiom 

has given us this picture of the oratory on Behalf of 

of Otis on this occasion : 1765 - 

" Otis was a flame of fire ! With a promptitude of classical 
allusion, a depth of research, a rapid summary of historical events 
and dates, a profusion of legal authorities, a prophetic glance of 
his eyes into futurity, a rapid torrent of impetuous eloquence, he 
hurried away all before him. American independence was then 
and there born. Every man of an unusually crowded audience 
appeared to me to go away ready to take up arms againsts Writs 
of Assistance. . . . James Otis then and there breathed into this 
nation the breath of life." 

Life (by William Tudor, 1823). Otis was born in 
West Barnstable, Massachusetts, in 1725, and was gradu- 
ated at Harvard in 1743. His oratory, which was even 
more impetuous and fiery than that of Adams, easily 
obtained for him the leadership of the patriot party in 
Massachusetts. 

In 1767, at the very height of his usefulness and at 
the very crisis of affairs in America, the mind of the 
young leader failed him. For fourteen years he lingered 
on, a pitiful ruin, dying in the very year that brought 
freedom and peace to his country. It is well known 
that the stirring speech of the reading books, so long 



70 AMERICAN LITERATURE. 

a favorite with schoolboys, was written by Mrs. Child 
as a part of her novel, The Rebels. 



3. Josiah Quincy (1744-1775). 

Josiah Quincy completes the remarkable trio of ora- 
tors that Massachusetts furnished for the patriot cause. 
Like Adams and Otis, he graduated at Har- 

Observations on 

the Boston Port vard, to become soon after prominent as a 

Bill. 1774. . . _ _ . - 

lawyer in Boston. In spite of a slight 
frame and feeble health, he had a voice of great com- 
pass and beauty. His oratory, while not so impetuous 
as that of Otis, is described as being very pleasing and 
persuasive. His industry was wonderful. He success- 
fully defended the soldiers implicated in the Boston 
Massacre, made numerous speeches in town meetings 
and public assemblies, and wrote many stirring articles 
for the periodicals of his time. In 1774 he was sent on 
a private mission to England, where he accomplished 
much as a zealous advocate of Colonial rights. He died 
on the return voyage, in his thirty-first year, just at the 
opening of the great struggle. It was hard indeed for 
the Colonies at such a time to lose young men of the 
stamp of Otis, and Warren, and Quincy. The writings 
of Quincy, as preserved in the biography written by his 
son, are full of force and fire and a lofty patriotism. 

Josiah Quincy, 2d (1772-1864). —The family of the 
Quincys, like that of the Adamses, with which it is 
allied, has been in many ways a remarkable one. Dur- 
ing three generations each has been prominent in poli- 



THE REVOLUTIONARY PERIOD. 71 

tics and literature. Josiah Quincy, son of the above, 
was for many years a leading figure in Congress. He 
strongly opposed the second war with England, and the 
extension of United States territory by the admission 
of Louisiana. He was president of Harvard College 
from 1829 to 1845. His principal works are his Memoir 
of Josiah Quincy, 1825 ; The History of Harvard Uni- 
versity, 1840 ; Municipal History of Boston, 1852, and 
Life of John Quincy Adams, 1858. 

(See Life by his son Edmund, the author of Wensley, 
a Tale of New England ; also Lowell's My Study Win- 
dows, pp. 83-114.) 

4. Patrick Henry (1736-1799). 

"The most wonderful of orators." — Jefferson. 
"Full of the fire and splendor of the South." 

Again, after a century and a half, the attention of 
the student of American literature is turned toward 
Virginia. The almost feudal system of society, which 
prevailed in this State, had been especially favorable to 
the development of leaders. While New England was 
busying herself with religious cavils, Virginia was train- 
ing men who were to become skilled in statescraft, in 
oratory, in worldly wisdom. This not only gave her 
the generalship of the War of Independence, but when 
peace came it enabled her to furnish the young repub- 
lic with some of the most wonderful statesmen of any 
century. 

Life of Patrick Henry (by William Wirt, 1817, —very 



72 AMERICAN LITERATURE. 

« 

luxuriant in its style, looked upon with suspicion by- 
many on account of its manifest hero worship ; by Alex- 
ander Everett in Sparks' Library of American Biog- 
raphy ; by Moses Coit Tyler in American Statesmen 
Series. See, also, McMaster's History of the United 
States, Vol. I.). The first voice to call attention back 
to Virginia was that of Patrick Henry. His fervid 
speech before the Virginia Assembly of 1765, met to 
discuss the passage of the Stamp Act, brought him at 
once into prominence as a wonderful orator. In the 
torrent of his eloquence he had swept all before him. 
" Caesar had his Brutus," he cried ; " Charles the First 
his Cromwell, and George the Third — " Loud cries 
of "Treason! treason!" interrupted him. Pausing till 
they had subsided, he added " may profit by their exam- 
ple. If this be treason, make the most of it." 

But Henry's greatest effort was delivered in March, 
1775, in the Virginia Convention, met to discuss the 
question whether that Colony should be immediately 
put into a state of defence. Of this speech we have 
no verbatim copy. The draft given by his biographer, 
William Wirt, contains only the substance of Henry's 
oration, the actual wording without doubt being from 
Wirt's pen. But we know that the effect of the ora- 
tion was electrical. In a rapid stream of eloquence he 
swept down all opposition. Every one is familiar with 
the wonderful words given by Wirt. 

"It is now too late to retire from the contest. There is no re- 
treat but in submission or slavery. Our chains are forged ; their 
clanking may be heard on the plains of Boston. The war is inevi- 



THE REVOLUTIONARY PERIOD. 73 

table and let it come : I repeat it, sir, let it come. It is vain to 
extenuate the matter. Gentlemen may cry ' Peace ! Peace!' but 
there is no peace. The war has actually begun . The next gale 
that sweeps from the North will bring to our ears the crash of 
resounding arms! Our brethren are already in the field, why 
stand we here idle?" 

The orator had spoken with the voice of a prophet. 
The news of Lexington and Concord was already in 
the air. 

The career of Patrick Henry centres about these two 
great efforts. He had been admitted to the bar after 
studying law six weeks, but he had been a "briefless 
barrister" until 1765, when he at once became the hero 
of Virginia. Every honor was held out to him, but 
after serving twice as governor of the State, he left 
public life, even refusing several important Federal 
offices which came to him in his last years. 

His oratory appeals strongly to the emotions. In his 
legal practice he depended more on the spell which his 
eloquence threw over the jury, than on a mastery of 
the legal intricacies of the case. He was fervid rather 
than weighty; superficial and hasty rather than deep. 
His oratory abounds in figurative language ; it is some- 
times overwrought, even turgid, full of exaggerations 
and extravagant rhapsodies, yet when joined with the 
fire, the energy, the flashing eye, the impassioned voice 
of the man who originated it, it was irresistible. 

Required Reading. — Henry's speech before the Virginia 
Convention. 



74 AMERICAN LITERATURE. 

II. THE PERIOD OF RESISTANCE. 

1775-1783. 

This period of American history, so full of romance 
and heroism, growing more and more dim and vague 
with every year, has furnished historians, poets, novel- 
ists, and painters with a wonderful background for 
romantic songs and tales and pictures. Longfellow 
has told the stirring tale of " Paul Revere's Ride " on 
the night before Lexington ; Emerson in his " Concord 
Hymn " has sung how 

" the embattled farmers stood 
And fired the shot heard round the world." 

Holmes has given us " Grandmother's Story of the 
Bunker Hill Battle," and Cooper, who with a master 
hand has pictured in Lionel Lincoln the same desperate 
struggle, knew well the romantic possibilities of the 
field, as many of his other novels show. Bryant sang 
of " Seventy-six," and the " Song of Marion's Men " 5 
Simms, in The Partisan, told in prose the thrilling story 
of the Robin Hood of the South Carolina Swamps ; 
John P. Kennedy, in Horseshoe Robinson, told the 
story of King's Mountain ; Mrs. Child wrote The Rebels, 
a Tale of the Revolution; Thompson, in The Green 
Mountain Boys, caught the romance of Ticonderoga; 
Hawthorne threw his mystic charm over the period in 
Septimius Felton, and Theodore Winthrop, with his 
bright, breezy style, found life in it for his Edwin 
Brothertoft. 



THE REVOLUTIONARY PERIOD. 75 

But while the period has furnished a fruitful field 
for later writers, it produced no immediate literary 
results. With every energy bent on the work of war, 
there was no time for literary production. Only one 
riter need be mentioned. 

1. Thomas Paine (1737-1809). 

" The impartial historian must declare that liberty owes nearly as 
much to the courageous advocacy of Paine, as to the military services 
of Washington." — Underwood. 

Life (by George Chalmers, 1791 ; by William Cob- 
bett, 1796 ; by James Cheatham, 1809 ; by Gilbert 
Vale, 1891, and by several others. The Oommon Senset 
most valuable complete edition of his writ- : H 76 * 

r The Crisis. 1776. 

ings is that edited by Moncure D. Con- The Rights of 
way, 1895). It is a noteworthy fact that The Age of 
the most powerful champion of Colonial Reason - 
freedom during the American Revolution, was a man 
who, until 1774, had been a loyal subject of England 
and even an officer under the British government. 
Paine was born in England of Quaker parentage, 1737. 
After a varied career as staymaker, privateer, dissent- 
ing preacher,* and grocer, he at length found his way 
into the British revenue service, from which, however, 
he was soon dismissed under a false charge of smug- 
gling. At this "critical time in his career he came in 
contact with Benjamin Franklin, who was then in 
England, who strongly advised him to cast in his fort- 
unes with the American Colonies. Never did Franklin 
render his country a greater service. Immediately 



76 AMERICAN LITERATURE. 

upon Paine's arrival in America he became editor of 
the Pennsylvania Magazine. Two years later he scat- 
tered broadcast a powerful political pamphlet advocat- 
ing, in no uncertain voice, the complete independence 
of the Colonies. The effect was electrical. The pam- 
phlet struck the keynote of popular feeling, expressing 
clearly and courageously what every one had scarcely 
allowed himself to think. Honors were showered upon 
the bold author. The legislature gave him £500. In 
December of the same year, he published a little period- 
ical called The Crisis, devoted to the furtherance of the 
cause of liberty. Its opening words, " These are the 
times that try men's souls," have become famous. 
Though it appeared only at irregular intervals, and 
soon suspended entirely, it accomplished much good. 
The first number, by order of Washington, was read 
entire before every American regiment. 

After the Revolution Paine's career was a varied 
one. In 1787, while in France, he published, in reply 
to Burke's Reflections on the French Revolution, The 
Rights of Man, a book which so delighted the French 
people that he was at once granted citizenship and 
given a seat in the National Convention. ' Afterwards, 
after narrowly escaping the guillotine, he was thrown 
into prison by Robespierre. It was while in confine- 
ment here that he wrote The Age of ■' Reason, a bitter 
attack on the Bible from the deistic standpoint. This 
book, which was published against the earnestly ex- 
pressed wishes of Franklin, made its author a host of 
enemies. With such horror was its author looked upon 



THE REVOLUTIONARY PERIOD. 11 

by a majority of the American people, that his early ser- 
vices to the cause of liberty were almost forgotten. The 
Age of Reason is unfair in its treatment of the Bible and 
has been many times answered and confuted. 
Paine died in New York in 1809. 

III. THE PERIOD OF RECONSTRUCTION. 

1783-1809. 

The Critical Period. — (See The Critical Period of 
American History, John Fiske.) On the 19th of 
April, just eight years to a day after 1788. Trial of 

,,,„-,-. , ■, Warren Hast- 

the battle ol Lexington, the surrender at ings. 

Yorktown put an end to armed hostilities. Revolution! 011 

In September of the same year the Treaty SgSd 

of Paris left the thirteen Colonies inde- Presideut - 

1793. Louis 

pendent of Great Britain. The Americans xvi. beheaded. 

, , ,, . . r i n i,i Reign of Terror 

had won, the ringing ol bells and the roar- in France, 

ing of cannon voiced their joy, but Ameri- i e0 n's first°~ 

can independence was not yet assured. igoo^Ca'itai 

Difficulties almost insuperable yet re- 2* the United 

mained. John Fiske has called the six at Washington, 

years between the Peace of Paris and the raphy invented. 

adoption of the Constitution, " the critical ^n Empe^'r 

period of American history-" The prob- ofFrance - 

1 J r 1805 Trafal- 

lems of war are simple compared with gar. Death of 
those that follow it. Mere conquest and i807. Fulton's 

I , , • i re , 1 -i steamboat on 

destruction may be ertected by savages, the Hudson, 
but reconstruction is a work for demigods, f. 783- ^, 30, z 80 " 

o livar liberates 

Union. — No sooner had peace been de- * he s< ? uth 

*- American 

clared, than the union of the Colonies, Colonies. 



78 AMERICAN LITERATURE. 

which had been their strength during the war, was for- 
gotten. It had been at best only a temporary joining 
of strength to ward off a common danger. Even after 
independence had been won, Union, in the sense in 
which we now conceive of it, was undreamed of even 
by the most advanced thinkers. When, in November, 
1783, the Continental Army was disbanded, each soldier 
retired to his home and spoke of himself, not as a 
citizen of the Independent Colonies of America, but as 
a citizen of Massachusetts or of Virginia, as the case 
might be. 

The Continental Congress had been a war body 
simply. It had conducted the war and had contracted 
enormous debts, but it was powerless to tax the people. 
The Articles of Confederation were so loose in their 
binding power that they were practically useless. 
Each State had its own commercial regulations. Dis- 
cord arose which threatened to result in thirteen inde- 
pendent nations along the Atlantic coast. 

The Constitution. — (See P. L. Ford's Bibliography 
and Reference List of the Constitution. The best mono- 
graphs that have yet appeared on the Framing and 
Framers of the Constitution are by MacMaster, Century 
Magazine, Vol. 12, p. 746, and by John Fiske, Atlantic 
Monthly, February, 1887. See MacMaster's History of the 
United States and Fiske's Critical Period.') By 1787, 
Colonial affairs had drifted into such a chaos of diffi- 
culties, that the demand for a definite policy and for 
immediate action became imperative. Accordingly, in 
May, delegates to the number of fifty-five, from all the 



THE REVOLUTIONARY PERIOD. 79 

Colonies, met at Philadelphia to discuss the situation 
and to form, if possible, the plan for " a more perfect 
union." 

The Convention was a remarkable one. Washington 
was its president, and Franklin, Hamilton, and Madison 
were prominent members. " It was an assembly of demi- 
gods," declared Jefferson. For nearly four months, with 
closed doors, it wrestled with problems worthy of demi- 
gods, until on Sept. 17, 1787, thirty-nine of the members 
signed what was to be the Constitution 
of the United States of America, "the 1782 ' Webst er. 

1783. Irving. 

most wonderful work," says Gladstone, 1789. Cooper. 
" ever struck off at a given time bv the 1794, Br y ant - 

° J 1796. Prescott. 

brain and purpose of man. Almost isoo. Bancroft, 
every article of this document had been 1803, Emerson - 

J . 1801. Haw- 

the result of compromise either between thorne. 
radicals and conservatives, between North f e ii w. ° ng " 
and South, or large States and small 1807 - Whittier. 

- . . 1809. Poe. 

ones. Hardly one of the signers could iso9. Holmes, 
personally endorse every part of the instru- 
ment. It divided the people immediately into two fac- 
tions, from which grew the political parties that have 
played so conspicuous a part in American politics. The 
Federalists endorsed the new Constitution, while the 
Anti-Federalists opposed it vigorously, even endeavoring 
to prevent its acceptance by the necessary number of 
States. 

On June 21, 1788, the ninth State ratified the Consti- 
tution, and the United States of America became an 
accomplished fact. 



80 AMERICAN LITERATURE. 

Required Reading. — Franklin's Address on the last day of 
the Constitutional Convention. See also Old South Leaflets for 
text of the Constitution, with short bibliography. 

The New Nation. — The Revolutionary Age of our 
literature does not end with the birth of the new nation. 
The echoes of the great struggle lingered well into the 
first decade of the Nineteenth Century. It is the work 
of time to revolutionize the ideas of a people. The 
form of government that was offered to the Colonies for 
their approval was a thing "new under the sun." The 
Constitution had been forced upon many of the Ameri- 
cans against their better judgment, and deep wounds 
rankled in many hearts. It was a time of suspicion, 
" of test cases," of doubt and hesitancy. The new 
instrument, upon which was to hang the liberties and 
happiness of the people, had not been tested, and confi- 
dence in the central government grew slowly. It was 
not until after the second war with England that sus- 
picion and doubt began to die away, and that patriotism 
and love for the united fatherland took root in all 
hearts. 

Literary Conditions. — That an independent literature 
can exist only among nations that are free is an axiom 
as old as the history of letters. Art cannot flourish 
without patriotism and without a free fatherland. 
Athens had been free for a century before she became 
a literary centre ; England was three centuries in pro- 
ducing a Chaucer. There could be no independent 
literature in America until her sons had learned to 
trust her implicitly and love her devotedly. Although 



THE REVOLUTIONARY PERIOD. 81 

much was written in America in Colonial and Revolu- 
tionary times, it was not in reality American literature, 
since it was but an echo of the literature of England. 

The writers of the period of reconstruction fall into 
two groups : " The Nation Builders " and the little 
band of pioneers that gave the first feeble lispings of 
American song and romance. 

1. George Washington (1732-1799). 

"Virginia gave us this imperial man, 
Cast in the massive mould 
Of those high-statured ages old, 
Which into grander forms our mortal metal ran ; 



Mother of States and undiminished men, 
Thou gavest us a country giving him." 

Lowell, "Under the Old Elm." 

Life (by Washington Irving; by Chief Justice 
Marshall; and by many others. The best life of 
Washington for young people is H. E. Scudder's). 
Although Washington was only incidentally a man of 
letters, his "literary remains," as collected by Jared 
Sparks, fill twelve large volumes. While these are 
largely composed of collections of state papers, de- 
spatches, messages, and business letters, they contain, 
nevertheless, many things possessing rare literary value. 
As a letter writer Washington had few superiors ; his 
journals, notably the account of his famous journey to 
the Ohio, first published in 1754, are written in clear, 
concise English ; and his farewell addresses are full of 



82 AMERICAN LITERATURE. 

a wisdom and a stateliness worthy in every way of the 
great man who produced them. 

Required Reading. — Washington's "Rules of Conduct," 
"Journal," "Letters," and "Farewell Addresses." Riverside 
Literature Series, No. 24. 

2. John Adams (1735-1826). 

"His letters . . . are among the best in our literature." — 
Underwood. 

Life (by Charles Francis Adams, with works in ten 
volumes, 1850 ; by J. Q. and C. F. Adams, 1871). The 
second President of the United States is known in liter- 
ature chiefly from the charming correspondence that 
passed between him and his wife during the most stir- 
ring period of our history. These letters, which have 
been given to the world by Charles Francis Adams, are 
singularly frank and tender. Besides revealing two 
rare personalities, and an almost ideal domestic life, 
they possess a literary merit of very high rank. 

Adams, aside from the inevitable public documents 
and messages incident to his position, produced several 
powerful pamphlets of contemporary interest, and kept 
a journal which is now of great value to the student of 
our early national life. 

Suggested Reading. — Letters of John and Abigail Adams, 
school edition, Taintor Bros. ; also Old South Leaflets. 

John Quincy Adams (1767-1848), the sixth President 
of the United States, was far more learned and accom- 
plished than his father, though greatly inferior to him 



THE REVOLUTIONARY PERIOD. 83 

in native ability. Though a constant writer, publish- 
ing during his life works on rhetoric, European travel, 
Shakespearean criticism and biography, besides a book 
of poems and many political articles, he deserves men- 
tion rather as a statesman than an author. Like his 
father, he kept a full diary, and like him maintained 
a voluminous and charming correspondence. His life 
has been written by W. H. Seward, by Josiah Quincy, 
and by John T. Morse, Jr. 

3. Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826). 

"The most acute philosophic intellect of the time." — Lawrence. 

Life (by his grandson Thomas Jefferson Randolph; 
by George Tucker; by Henry S. Randall; by James 
Parton ; by John T. Morse, Jr., and by Notes on Vir- 
others. See Cooke's Stories of the Old ^Theciara- 
Dominion-). ggk?*"" 

In scholarship and breadth of view Jef- Rights of Brit- 
ferson surpassed all of his contemporaries ; Letters. 
in the theory and practice of statescraft he Autobiography. 
has, perhaps, never had a superior in America. In an 
oratorical age he never made a set speech in his life ; he 
had only moderate administrative ability, and he cared 
nothing for the pomp and display that appeal so strongly 
to most men, but he could pen words that were mag- 
netic. Throughout his career as a statesman, he de- 
pended largely on his vigorous prose style for his 
influence on men and events. As a result, his state 
papers, his messages and official letters, possess a liter- 



84 AMERICAN LITERATURE. 

ary merit rarely to be found in such documents. Jeffer- 
son's monument is the Declaration of Independence, 
which is, without doubt, the most literary, as it is the 
best known, state paper in America. 

In 1784 Jefferson published, at the request of the 
French government, Notes on Virginia, a little book that 
at once gained a deserved popularity. Besides contain- 
ing much practical wisdom, it contained many fine stud- 
ies of natural scenery. At times the author approaches 
sublimity in his descriptions, as in the following : 

" The passage of the Potomac through the Blue Ridge is, per- 
haps, one of the most stupendous scenes in Nature. You stand on 
a very high point of land. On your right comes up the Shenan- 
doah, having ranged along the foot of the mountain an hundred 
miles to seek a vent. On your left approaches the Potomac, in 
quest of a passage also. In the moment of their junction they 
rush together against the mountain, rend it asunder, and pass off 
to the sea. The first glance of this scene hurries our senses into 
the opinion that this earth has been created in time, that the 
mountains were formed first, that the rivers began to flow after- 
ward, that in this place, particularly, they have been dammed up 
by the Blue Ridge of mountains, and have formed an ocean which 
filled the whole valley — that continuing to rise, they have at 
length broken over this spot, and have torn the mountain down 
from its summit to its base." 

The impress of Jefferson's powerful mind upon his 
times is everywhere clearly to be seen. He was in 
every sense a leader. Opposing the new Constitution, 
since to his mind it gave too much power to the cen- 
tral government, he immediately became the recognized 
leader of the Anti-Federalist party. Later, when the 
Constitution had been adopted by the people, he headed 



THE REVOLUTIONARY PERIOD. 85 

the strict constructionist faction from which has de- 
scended the Democratic party of to-day. 

A suggestive coincidence, one that has been immor- 
talized by the eloquence of Webster and other contem- 
porary orators, is the fact that John Adams and Thomas 
Jefferson died on the same day, July 4, 1826. " The 
two founders of freedom seemed to rise together to the 
stars." 

Suggested Reading. — Webster's Discourse on the Lives and 
Services of John Adams and Thomas Jefferson, 1826; see also Old 
South Leaflets for text of the Declaration of Independence. Jeffer- 
son's works have been published in nine volumes. 

4. James Madison (1751-1836). 
" The Father of the Constitution." 
Life (by William C. Rives, 1866; by John Quincy 
Adams, 1854; by Sidney H. Gay, 1889). James Madi- 
son, the fourth President, completes the remarkable trio 
of Virginians, who added lustre to our m 

° Twenty-nme 

early history. All of the best of Madi- Federalist 

J J m Papers. 

son's literary work is connected with the Eeportso/the 
Constitution. He made the first draught pf^Con- 
of this instrument to be presented to the ventl0n - 

^ . . , • , • n i i Madison Pa- 

Convention : he was prominent in all the pe rs, 3 vols., 
debates that followed; he wrote twenty- 
nine of the eighty-five Federalist Papers, defending and 
explaining it ; and his journal of the debates of the 
Convention is the most complete and authentic record 
of that important assembly. 

Required Reading. — "The Last Day of the Convention," 
from Madison's Journal. Old South Leaflets. 



86 AMERICAN LITERATURE. 



5. Alexander Hamilton (1757-1804). 

" Hamilton was the greatest man the country has ever seen, always 
excepting Washington." — Chief Justice Marshall. 

"Orator, writer, soldier, jurist, financier." — From Hamilton' 1 s 
monument. 

Life (by his son John C. Hamilton, 1834-1840, with 
works in several volnmes ; by George Shed ; by John T. 
The Federalist Morse, Jr., and by others. Morse's work 
Papers. j g p ro bably regarded as the standard Life 

of Hamilton, though that by H. C. Lodge, in the Amer- 
ican Statesman Series, is by all means the best for school 
use. See also Lodge's Studies in History, p. 132). 

The brief line, given above, from the monument of 
Alexander Hamilton, reduces to its lowest terms the 
career of a remarkably versatile man. First a student 
in Columbia College ; then called from his studies to a 
brilliant career as a soldier in the patriot army; aide- 
de-camp to Washington ; then jurist winning the praises 
of such lawyers as Jay and Marshall ; member from New 
York of the Continental Congress and the Federal Con- 
vention ; author of the greater number of the Feder- 
alist Papers; then orator for the new Constitution, 
turning almost single-handed the tide of public senti- 
ment in the crucial State of New York ; and finally the 
first Secretary of the Treasury, creating a financial policy 
that saved the nation from bankruptcy, — such, in brief, 
are the main facts in an unusually eventful life. 

The public career of Hamilton naturally divides itself 
in two periods : the first characterized by his efforts to 



THE REVOLUTIONARY PERIOD. 87 

bring about the adoption of the Constitution; the sec- 
ond marked by his magnificent statesmanship in the 
service of the new government. It is difficult to de- 
termine in which capacity he did the nation the great- 
est service. His financial policy is summed up in the 
well-known words of Webster : " He smote the rock of 
national resources, and abundant streams of revenue 
gushed forth. He touched the dead corpse of public 
credit, and it sprang upon its feet." But it is in connec- 
tion with his efforts to introduce to the people the new 
Constitution that Hamilton's fame as a writer depends. 

The Federalist Papers. — The first number of the 
Federalist Papers appeared in the New York Indepen- 
dent Gazette of Oct. 27, 1787, and they continued to 
appear at semi-weekly intervals for nearly a year. The 
papers were published under the signature of "Pub- 
lius," and as a result their authorship has been ques- 
tioned. It is known, however, that Hamilton originated 
the idea of the series, and that he contributed the most 
powerful numbers. The most unprejudiced estimate 
ascribes fifty-one papers to Hamilton, twenty-nine to 
Madison, and five to Jay. Although addressed to the 
people of New York, and written with the primary idea 
of explaining to them the new Constitution, these essays 
had a far wider audience. They were copied in all the 
Colonial papers, exerting an influence for good that 
cannot be estimated. 

The great value of the Federalist Papers as treatises 
on the Constitution and our federal government has 
been commented upon. John Fiske declares them 



88 AMERICAN LITERATURE. 

"undoubtedly the most profound and suggestive 
treatise on government that has ever been written." 
H. C. Lodge writes: 

" The great legal minds have set the seal of their approbation 
upon them; and in modern times, in the formation of a great 
empire, statesmen have turned to them and to their principal 
author as the pre-eminent authority on the subject of federation. 
The effect of these remarkable essays in converting and forming 
public opinion can hardly be overestimated." 

Required Reading. — Old South Leaflets, Nos. 1 and 2. See 
also The Federalist, H. C. Lodge, editor, New York, 1888. 

Other Writers. — The list of remarkable men who laid 
the foundations of our government and incidentally 
produced literature, is a long one, yet only a few names 
need be mentioned here. John Jay (1745-1829), 
first Chief Justice of the United States, wrote clearly 
and well on political and legal topics ; Gouverneur 
Morris (1752-1816) was a powerful orator; Fisher 
Ames (1758-1808), a passionate political speaker and 
newspaper writer, was the ever-ready champion of the 
New England Federalists ; and James Monroe (1758- 
1831), the seventh President of the United States, 
wrote several scholarly political works, as The People 
the Sovereigns, etc. 

The First Truly American Literature. — None of this 
remarkable group of men aspired to literary distinction ; 
none of them can strictly be called a literary man; 
nevertheless it was from their pens that the first true 
American literature came. The creators of the Con- 
stitution followed no models. The mark of their 



THE REVOLUTIONARY PERIOD. 89 

individuality is upon everything that they did and 
wrote. It was in her political literature that America 
first broke away from the intellectual chain that bound 
her to England. 



VI. 

THE SONG AND ROMANCE OF THE REVOLUTION. 

I. THE POETRY OF THE REVOLUTION. 

The War of Independence, that struggle in the forests 
of a new world, so full of heroism, of romance and poe- 
try, remained unsung for half a century after its close. 
" No poetry," says Stedman, " was begotten of the rage 
of that heroic strife ; its humor, hatred, hope, suffering, 
prophecy, were feebly uttered, so far as verse was con- 
cerned, in the mode and language inherited years before 
from the coarsest English satirists." 

But if there was a lack of poetry, there was certainly 
no lack of versifiers. Rhymed politics at great length 
burdened the weekly newspapers. Never before was 
the Muse so harnessed to the political chariot, never 
since have poems on so ambitious a scale been attempted. 
Three epics, each of them almost as long as the Iliad, 
are among the poetical products of the period. Says 
Professor Beers, "An effort was made to establish by 
tour deforce a national literature of a bigness commensu- 
rate with the scale of American nature, and the destinies 
of the new republic." 

But a literature cannot be made at will by sheer 
force. The ponderous epics, that so impressed their 
first readers, are now readable, as Leslie Stephen said of 

90 



THE SONG AND ROMANCE OF THE REVOLUTION 91 

Johnson's Irene, " only by men in whom a sense of duty 
has been abnormally developed." In them one searches 
almost in vain for a touch of nature, for a bit of genuine 
poetry. Almost every line reveals its dependence on 
English models. The authors openly, even proudly, 
confessed their imitation. Timothy Dwight published 
"America, a Poem in the Style of Pope's Windsor 
Forest," and the same author declared in his poem 
"Greenfield Hill" that he designed "to imitate the 
manner of several British poets." When MFingal 
appeared, there echoed from all sides, as the highest 
praise that could be given, the verdict that it could 
hardly be told from Butler's Hudibras. 

The Revolutionary rhymers were not fortunate in 
their models. It was a time when English poetry was 
at its lowest ebb. # The artificial school of Pope had for 
a centurv and a half bound British verse 

J 1731-1800. 

with its " ten-linked chain." All that was Cowper. 

spontaneous and natural had been frowned Wordsworth. 

upon. The last half of the Eighteenth g 7 ^ 1832 ' 

Centurv found England without a poet of 1772-1834. 

. . j. Coleridge. 

the first rank and with little promise for the 1774-1843. 
future. The American imitators had to ^^52 
take as guides inferior versifiers like Dar- M oore. 

& _ 1788-1824. 

win or Hayley, or go back to Pope and Byron. 
Goldsmith. The new natural school, led gheiiey^ ' 
by Thomson, and Gray, and Cowper, had ^795-1821. 
as yet made little headway. Later, when 
the powerful voices of Wordsworth and Coleridge 
and Southey began to dominate the chorus of English 



92 AMERICAN LITERATURE. 

verse, the Americans would not listen, since these poets 
were ardent democrats. The splendor of the day of 
Scott and Byron and Keats was yet to come. 

Songs and Ballads. — (See Moore's Songs and Ballads 
of the American Revolution, 1855 ; and G. C. Eggleston's 
American War Ballads and Lyrics, 1889.) Every war 
has its songs and ballads, little waifs that spring up 
almost spontaneously to die often as quickly. The 
early Colonial wars were the occasion of a few curious 
ballads ; " The Song of Braddock's Men," a lively little 
lyric, commencing: 

" To arms, to arms ! my jolly grenadiers," 

survives from the French and Indian War, and the 
Revolutionary struggle produced its full quota of 
verse. While the most of the songs that echoed about 
the camp-fires of Boston, and Morristown, and Valley 
Forge have passed into oblivion, they are well repre- 
sented, perhaps, by such survivors as Jonathan Mitchell 
Sewall's "War and Washington," an ambitious lyric 
much sung during the war, and the anonymous " Yankee 
Doodle," that piece of rollicking doggerel which has 
become undeservingly famous. 

Of ballads of the war large numbers have come down 
to us in the columns of contemporary newspapers. 
" The Taxation of America," written in 1778 by Peter 
St. John, tells at length the early history of the war. 
" The Ballad of Nathan Hale," the " Tale of John Bur- 
goyne," and " Bold Hawthorne " — the surgeon's record 
of the cruise of the privateer, Fair American — were all 



THE SONG AND ROMANCE OF THE REVOLUTION 93 

famous in their day. From Philadelphia came the 
humorous ballad, " The Battle of the Kegs," written 
by the Francis Hopkinson whose name is signed to 
the Declaration of Independence. Joseph Hopkinson, 
a son of this early humorist, afterwards wrote the 
patriotic song, " Hail Columbia," a production of small 
literary merit, saved from oblivion only by the stirring 
music to which it is joined. On the Tory side, the 
unfortunate Major Andre created, with his "Cow 
Chase," a comical parody of the old ballad " Chevy- 
Chase," much fun at the expense of " Mad " Anthony 
Wayne. The last stanza of this poem seems to have 
been almost prophetic : 

" And now I've closed my epic strain, 
I tremble as I show it, 
Lest this same warrior-drover, Wayne, 
Should ever catch the poet." 

In Boston, Robert Treat Paine, Jr., gained great 
contemporary fame and some seven hundred and fifty 
dollars in substantial cash, with a little poem entitled 
"Adams and Liberty," a production which seems dull 
enough, however, at the present day. 



1. John Trumbull (1750-1831). 
" The American Butler." 

Life (see Moses Coit Tyler's Three Men of Letters, 
1895 ; also S. C. Goodrich's Recollections of a Lifetime, 
1857). 



94 AMERICAN LITERATURE. 

The representative literary product of the Revolu- 
tionary Age, the one that, more than all others, breathes 
The Progress f° r th the spirit of that heroic time, is 
s{tfv l e ness,a Trumbull's long, self-styled epic, M' Fin- 
Elegy on the gal, a poem which deserves the high praise 
M'Fingai. of being numbered among the forces that 

Essays (with accomplished our independence. M'Fin- 
Dwight). g a i was wr itten, so its author tells us, 

" to satirize the follies and extravagancies of my coun- 
trymen, as well as of their enemies." But the follies 
of his countrymen are lightly touched upon, while 
M'Fingai, who represents the Tories, is destined to 
defeat and disgrace in every encounter with his sturdy 
opponents. Utterly confounded by the logic of the 
Whig champion, with whom he attempts discussion, he 
is tarred and feathered and forced to flee for his life 
into the camp of General Gage at Boston. The poem 
is permeated through and through with a sly humor 
that was irresistible to its first readers. Like its great 
model, Hudibras it is full of epigram and couplets that 
provoke quotation. 

Trumbull was a native of Connecticut and a member 
of the class of 1767, at Yale College. After serving 
as tutor for several years, he studied law with John 
Adams in Boston, afterwards practising his profession 
in Hartford, where for eighteen years he was a judge 
of the Superior Court. His complete poetical works 
were first published in Hartford by S. C. Goodrich, in 
1820. 

Suggested Reading. — Tyler's Three Men of Letters. 



THE SONG AND ROMANCE OF THE REVOLUTION 95 

2. Timothy Dwight (1752-1817). 
Life (by W. B. Sprague in Sparks' American Biog- 



Vol. 14; also Memoir by his son, Sereno O. 
Dwight. See Goodrich's Recollections'). 

° . The Conquest of 

Although the author of an epic in eleven Canaan. 1785. 
books and of several other ambitious pro- r ^'^ Ex [ 
ductions in heroic verse, Timothy Dwight, ^inedcmd 
as might be expected of a grandson of Travels in New 

England and 

Jonathan Edwards, is better known as a New York. 4 
theologian, scholar, and educator than as 
a poet. After his graduation at Yale, in 1769, he 
became successively a tutor in the college, a chaplain 
in the Continental Army, pastor at Northampton and 
Greenfield Hill, and, during the last twenty-two years 
of his life, the president of Yale College. His principal 
prose work, Theology Explained and Defended, was de- 
livered in the form of sermons, one hundred and seventy- 
three in number, before the Yale students. 

While in the Continental Army Dwight composed, 
several patriotic songs, the one best known beginning 

" Columbia, Columbia, to glory arise, 
The queen of the world and the child of the skies." 

His long and dreary epic, The Conquest of Canaan, 
written in the rhymed couplets of Pope, is excessively 
unnatural and monotonous throughout. The same may 
be said of nearly all of his rhyming attempts, though 
Greenfield Hill contains here and there a true poetic 
touch. Several of his hymns still retain their place in 



96 AMEBIC AN LITERATURE. 

the hymn books, the best known being his metrical 
version of the 83d Psalm : 

" I love thy kingdom, Lord, 
The house of Thine abode." 

His Travels in New England and New York, notes of 
vacation rambles, are full of keen observation and have 
a permanent value. 

In scholarship and force of character, D wight has had 
few superiors since Edwards. 

3. Joel Barlow (1755-1812). 

Life (by Charles B. Todd, 1886 ; also, Tyler's Three 
Men of Letters, 1895 ; and Everest's Poets of Connec- 
ticut). 

Joel Barlow completes the somewhat remarkable trio 
of " epic poets " that made Connecticut prominent dur- 
The Coiumbiad. ing the Revolutionary period. His early 

1 fifift 

Hash history does not much differ from that of 

Pudding. Trumbull and Dwight. Like them he 

entered Yale College, graduating in 1778 ; like Dwight 
he joined the Continental Army as chaplain, and like 
Trumbull he afterwards entered the legal profession. 
He had recited an ambitious poem at his graduation 
and nine years later had published by subscription The 
Vision of Columbus, but these and other poems from his 
pen he incorporated in his colossal epic, The Coiumbiad. 
This book, first published in 1808, with engravings 
executed in London, was the most magnificent speci- 
men of book-making that had ever been attempted in 



THE SONG AND ROMANCE OF THE REVOLUTION. 97 

America. From a literary point of view, however, it 
ranks among the curiosities of American literature. In 
ten books and over seven thousand lines it tells, in the 
metre of Pope, the entire history of America both real 
and imaginary. The poet represents Hesper as con- 
ducting Columbus to a lofty elevation, whence he 
shows him at a glance all the future kingdoms of the 
New World and the glory of them. The varied pano- 
rama of American history is unfolded before him and 
he is duly impressed with the tremendous possibilities 
open to the young republic. The theme is certainly 
broad enough for an epic, but unfortunately Barlow 
was not an epic poet. There are here and there beau- 
tiful passages, but the poem is unwieldy, 'full of digres- 
sions and curious expressions. Hawthorne declared that 
it should be dramatized and put upon the stage to the 
accompaniment of artillery and thunder and lightning. 
Barlow's humorous little poem Hasty Pudding, written 
in France in 1793 and dedicated to Martha Washington, 
is his best claim to remembrance. As a statesman and 
diplomatist Barlow holds a high place in American his- 
tory. He was consul to Algiers and to France, besides 
being sent at different times on many important foreign 
missions. 

Suggested Reading. — Hasty Pudding, Canto I. 

"The Hartford Wits." — With Trumbull, Dwight, 
and Barlow as leaders, Yale became for a time the 
intellectual centre and Hartford the literary capital of 
America. About these gathered a really brilliant little 



98 AMERICAN LITERATURE. 

band of ephemeral versifiers who lent their aid to the 
Federalist party, and with their spicy satirical poems 
gave picturesqueness to the controversy of the times. 
First appeared The AnarcMad (1786-87), a long poem 
written in concert by Barlow, Trumbull, David Hum- 
phreys, and Dr. Lemuel Hopkins, and published in the 
New Haven Gazette. Afterwards followed The Echo, and 
The Political G-reenhouse, from the pens of Richard Alsop, 
Hopkins, Theodore D wight, a son of Timothy D wight, 
and others. But the brilliancy of these " Pleiades of 
Connecticut " was only a passing phenomenon. 

4. Philip Freneau (1752-1832). 

Life (by E. A. Duyckink, with Poems of Philip 
Freneau, 1865). 

Although Trumbull, the laureate of the age, made 
the grand prophecy that 

"Fame shall attend and future years admire, 
Barlow's strong flight and Dwight's poetic fire," 

"The Wild the fame of all these poets has vanished 
"To a Honey with their generation, while a contempo- 
"ti'h f rar ^' an un P re tentious scribbler of news- 
Night." paper verse, who shared nothing in the 

"The Indian , , , . , , . , , 

Burying prophecy, has become immortal simply be- 

" The Indian cause he forgot once or twice the lifeless 
student." rules and models of his age and sang 

"The Parting & & 

Glass." spontaneously of Nature. 

Philip Freneau was born in New York- City, of 
French parentage, in 1752. He received his education 



THE SONG AND ROMANCE OF THE REVOLUTION 99 

at Princeton, New Jersey, where he was a classmate and 
roommate of James Madison, but before he had settled 
down to the study of his chosen profession of law, the 
Revolution changed his plans. During the struggle his 
burlesques and patriotic lyrics were very popular with 
the patriots, and after its close he continued to pour out 
a surprising amount of political verse, the most of it 
written in support of Jefferson and his party. In 1790 
he became editor of the New York Advertiser. Later 
he was appointed translator in the State Department 
at Philadelphia, then the seat of government, serving 
in the meantime as editor of the National Grazette. In 
1797, after editing for a time the Jersey Chronicle, he 
started in New York The Timepiece and Literary Chron- 
icle, which had, however, but a brief existence. During 
the last years of his life he was the commander of a 
coasting vessel plying between southern ports and the 
West Indies. 

No less than twelve editions of single poems and 
collections of poems, some of which bore the imprint 
of their author, appeared during Freneau's lifetime. 
But while the most of these are no better than the 
average newspaper verses of his day, among them there 
is to be found here and there a thing of beauty. " The 
Wild Honeysuckle," a little lyric of four stanzas, is the 
first bud of that branch of literature which reached its 
full flower in Bryant, Whittier, and Longfellow. Pro- 
fessor Greenough White declares it " the first stammer 
of poetry in America." As such, it deserves to be 
quoted entire : 



100 AMERICAN LITERATURE. 

" Fair flower that does so comely grow, 
Hid in this silent, dull retreat, 
Untouched thy honeyed blossoms blow, 
Unseen thy little branches greet : 
No roving foot shall crush thee here, 
No busy hand provoke a tear. 

" By Nature's self in white arrayed, 
She bade thee shun the vulgar eye, 
She planted here the guardian shade, 
And sent soft waters murmuring by ; 
Thus quietly the summer goes, 
Thy days declining to repose. 

" Smit with those charms that must decay, 
I grieve to see thy future doom ; 
They died — nor were those flowers more gay, 
The flowers that did in Eden bloom ; 
Unpitying frosts and Autumn's power 
Shall leave no vestige of this flower. 

" From morning suns and evening dews 
At first thy little blossom came : 
If nothing once, you nothing lose, 
For when you die you are the same : 
The space between is but an hour, 
The frail duration of a flower." 

The American Landscape. — As yet the wonderful 
beauties of the American landscape had been unsung. 
The glories of the autumn woods, the dreamy haze of 
the Indian Summer, the dainty wild flowers all new to 
the botanist, with a language and mythology as yet 
unknown ; the pensive beauties of the springtime ; the 
deer-haunted forest ; the little nameless lake afar in the 
hemlock woods with its legend all untold; the broad 
prairies; the fading race of red men, — all these were 



THE SONG AND ROMANCE OF THE REVOLUTION 101 

full of wonderful poetic possibility and awaiting their 
laureate. Freneau little knew of the possibilities of the 
wonderland in which he was the pioneer. In his " Indian 
Burying Ground," his "Indian Student," and other 
pieces he struck the first poetic note with the Indian for 
a theme. To the early Americans the Indian had been 
anything but a poetic creature. He had been looked 
upon by eyes distorted with terror. In Puritan New 
England he had been considered an agent of Satan him- 
self. But as lie had vanished from his old hunting- 
grounds the romantic mist that is wont to involve a 
fading race, no matter how ugly, had begun to enfold 
him.- Freneau was the first to perceive this new light 
in its literary bearings, and, though he caught it but 
imperfectly, he deserves praise as the first pioneer in 
a new literary field. 

Freneau's " House of Night," a sombre poem suggest- 
ing Coleridge, is the first note in the weird chorus soon 
swelled by Brown, Poe, and Hawthorne. 

Required Reading. — " The House of Night ; " " To a Honey 
Bee ; " " The Indian Student." 



H. THE ROMANCE. 

[For definition, see preface to Hawthorne's House of 
the Seven G-ables; consult also Richardson, II., 336-340.] 
Toward the close of the Eighteenth Century the novel of 
real life, as Fielding wrote it, gave way to the romance, 
and soon Mrs. Radcliffe was the most popular English 
writer of fiction. A school of followers immediately 



102 AMERICAN LITERATURE. 

arose, which soon carried this form of fiction beyond 
bounds that could be tolerated. The field of this school 
1717-1797. Hor- is well indicated by the titles of the books 
T/fe CaSie 0/ that it produced. Its most gifted member 
1760-1844. Wii- was Godwin, whose Caleb Williams is a 
rS^ eckf0rd ' P owerl ul though unwholesome romance. 
i 76 Hi 23 - ir The strong, healthful village tales of Jane 

Radcliffe. The ° ° 

Mysteries of Austen, and the sturdy romances of Scott, 

Udolpho. J 

1756-1836. Wii- put to flight these pestilent night mists, 
Caleb Williams, but not before they had made a lasting 

1755-1818. M. • v , , 

G. Lewis. The impression upon our literature. 
Taies'of Terror. Lack of Background in America. — (Sted- 
sSr>rS: man ' Ch ' L ' 3 ' ^chardson, II., 282-284.) 
enstein. Prose fiction in America is of a compara- 

tively recent date. Romance, with an American back- 
ground, was hard to make in the early years of the 
republic when the Colonial and Revolutionary periods 
seemed as yet too near for romantic perspective. " Every- 
thing," wrote Prescott, " wore a spick-and-span new 
aspect, and lay in the broad garish sunshine of every- 
day life." Even in recent years we find Hawthorne 
complaining of the difficulties that attended his work : 

" No author, without a trial, can conceive of the difficulty of 
writing a romance about a country where there is no shadow, no 
antiquity, no mystery, no picturesque and gloomy wrong, nor any- 
thing but a commonplace prosperity, in broad and simple daylight, 
as is happily the case with my dear native land. It will be very 
long, I trust, before romance writers may find congenial and easily 
handled themes, either in the annals of our stalwart republic, or in 
any characteristic and probable events of our individual lives. 
Romance and poetry, ivy, lichens, and wall-flowers, need ruin to 
make them grow." — Preface to The Marble Faun. 



THE SONG AND ROMANCE OF THE REVOLUTION. 103 



Charles Brockden Brown (1771-1810). 

"They [Brown's novels] are the historical beginning of all imagi- 
native prose literature in America ; and it is impossible to understand 
its development without having read them." — Thomas Wentworth 
Higginson. 

Life (by William Dunlap, with the 1815 edition of 
Brown's novels; by W. H. Prescott in Wieland 
Sparks' American Biography ; by Charles ^ n J} ond M 
J. Stevenson. An elegant edition of Edgar Huntley. 

° Clara Howard. 

Brown's novels appeared in 1887). Jane Talbot. 

Brown was born in Philadelphia, of Quaker ancestry, 
Jan. 17, 1771. Of retiring habits and delicate health, 
he received much of his education at home, where, left 
largely to himself, he became an omnivorous reader. At 
the age of sixteen he had, as was the fashion of his day, 
planned three epic poems, none of which, fortunately, 
ever came to maturity. Shortly afterwards he began the 
study of law, but soon abandoning the profession for 
which he was in no way fitted, he gave himself wholly 
to literary work. In 1798, while living in New York 
City, he published Wieland, his first romance, and fol- 
lowing this in rapid succession, five others, completing 
the series upon which his fame depends. 

In 1799, Brown established in New York the Monthly 
Magazine and American .Review, which died, however, 
before the year was out. Nothing daunted, he estab- 
lished in Philadelphia the Literary Magazine and Ameri- 
can Register, which continued w T ith considerable suc- 
cess for five years. During the last of his life Brown 



104 AMERICAN LITERATURE. 

wrote many political pamphlets and several excellent 
biographies. 

Wieland, the first of Brown's romances, is a wild, 
improbable story abounding in stilted description and 
ghastly incident. The hero, induced by voices that he 
believes to be from heaven, but which prove to have 
proceeded from a ventriloquist, deliberately sacrifices 
with his own hand his wife and children. Arthur 
Mervyn, a vivid picture of the yellow fever scourge in 
Philadelphia in 1793, written from actual experience, is, 
for faithfulness of description, almost the equal of 
Defoe's Journal of the Great Plague. Edgar Huntley ; 
or the Memoirs of a Sleep Walker is without doubt 
Brown's strongest work. Its scenes are laid in the wild 
and almost inaccessible recesses of the early Pennsyl- 
vania forests. Aside from the morbid element pervad- 
ing the book, it might have been written by Cooper. It 
introduces the Indian, and portrays with rare skill the 
scenery and life of the woods. 

His Style. — (Prescott's essay on Charles Brochden 
Brown; Richardson, II., 286-289.) Brown took as 
his master the English novelist Godwin, and, as a re- 
sult, his books belong on the same shelf as Caleb Wil- 
liams and The Mysteries of Udolpho. Judged by the 
standards set by Poe and Hawthorne, his work is crude 
and defective in art. The story is at times tediously 
spun out; character is dissected with disgusting minute- 
ness ; the plots are glaringly improbable; the characters 
either monsters or angels. He is not even a " clumsy 
Poe," as some have called him, so vastly inferior is 



THE SONG AND ROMANCE OF THE REVOLUTION. 105 

his art to his who produced the " Fall of the House of 
Usher." 

Brown's excellencies are his graphic portrayals of 
action and his descriptions of wild nature. He had the 
art of stimulating expectation ; — it is hard to lay down 
one of his romances unfinished ; one reads on and on in 
a sort of ghastly dream until at length the end of the 
book completes the hideous nightmare. 

Suggested Reading. — Prescott's essay on Charles Brockden 
Brown. 



VII. 

THE FIRST CREATIVE PERIOD. 

1812-1837. 

The War of 1812. — (See "Effect of the War of 1812 
on the Consolidation of the Union," J. H. U. Studies, 
V., 251.) The quarter of a century following the or- 
ganization of the United States government had been 
a period of hesitancy and doubt, during which rapid 
national development and an independent literature 
were impossible. The workings of the new govern- 
ment, so unlike anything else in the history of nations, 
had been watched with breathless interest. Would the 
new Constitution survive a crisis ? Would it stand the 
searching tests of time? Could the nation ever hope to 
take a secure place beside the powers of Europe ? 

The second war with England shed a flood of light 
upon many of these questions ; its conclusion opened a 
new era in American history. In the words of Senator 
Benton : 

" It immensely elevated the national character, and, as a conse- 
quence, put an end to insults and outrages to which we had been 

subject. No more impressments ; no more search- 
1809-1817. . J , . , -,t 

Madison's ln S our ships ; no more killing ; no more carrying 

Administration, off to be forced to serve on British ships against 

1814. Washing- their own country. The national flag became 

the British. respected. It became an iEgis of those who were 

106 



THE FIRST CREATIVE PERIOD. 107 

under it. The national character appeared in a 1815. Jack- 
new light abroad, we were no longer considered as f? n s victory at 
a people so addicted to commerce as to be insen- isi7-i825. 
sible to insult. ... It was a war necessary to the Monroe's 
honor and interest of the United States and was 1325-1829 
bravely fought and honorably concluded, and Adams' 

marks a proud era in our history."— Thirty Years' ^l^^™ 11011 - 

1829— loot. 
View. Jackson's 

#™_ -ivt i^ Tn -i • Administration. 

The New Era. — Ine period opening 
with the close of this war and ending with the financial 
crash of 1837 has been called, in the words of President 
Monroe, " the era of good feeling." The donbt and hes- 
itancy of an earlier day had vanished and now patriotism 
fairly effervesced from the people. It was the day of 
turgid Fourth-of-July oratory, of " spread-eagle " proph- 
ecy, of great expectations. With confidence in the gov- 
ernment came new intellectual activity. Thirteen states 

a •-, -i , -,., , -I ,-, admitted before 

An independent literature began to be the end of the 
dreamed of. On all sides resounded the ^tZ° ^ 

1791. Vermont. 

hum and activity of a new intellectual 1792. 

Kentucky. 

life. 



Immigration. — During the period a new 



1796. 
Tennessee. 
1802. Ohio. 



and important factor appeared in American 1812. 

, . 'ii c ■ -n • Louisiana. 

history m the shape of a rapidly increasing 1816> Indiana, 
immigration from Europe. During two J?. 17 -. . . 

10 Mississippi. 

weeks in the summer of 1817, there 1818. Illinois. 

arrived from the Old World 2,272 people AiSama. 

seeking homes in America, and from that 182 °- Maine, 

time until the present immigrants by the 1836 * 



shipload from every quarter of the earth 

have poured constantly upon us. A part Michigan. 

of this motley, polyglot crowd joined the stream of emi- 



108 AMERICAN LITERATURE. 

grants that soon began to pour into the West, until 
whole sections and even States became dominated by 
them. New England and the Middle States were inun- 
dated until they were in danger of losing their individ- 
uality. As yet it is impossible to estimate the wide- 
spread influence that this factor has had upon American 
history and development. 

" Westward Ho!" — 

" O you youths, western youths, 
So impatient, full of action, full of manly pride and friendship, 
Plain I see you, western youths, see you tramping with the fore- 
most. 

Pioneers ; O Pioneers." Walt Whitman. 

(See Roosevelt's Winning of the West. Also Irving's Captain 
Bonneville, and A Tour on the Prairies ; Paulding's Westward Ho ! 
Parkman's Oregon Trail ; Goodrich's Recollections of a Lifetime ; 
Flint's Recollections; Drake's Making of the Great West; Benton's 
Thirty Years' View, and standard biographies of Jackson, Adams, 
Calhoun, Clay, Webster, Benton, and Lewis Cass.) 

The purchase of the vast Louisiana territory, and the 
resulting Lewis and Clarke expedition, turned the eyes 
of all the East westward, and after the cold summer of 
1816 and the late spring of 1817, with its attendant 
famine, a general exodus, which soon assumed enor- 
mous proportions, began from the Atlantic States. All 
through the period long trains of white-topped emigrant 
wagons, often containing whole communities with all 
their possessions, were rolling toward the Mississippi. 
It was literally a " Wild West " that received them. 
Everything beyond Eastern New York was the primeval 
wilderness represented in Cooper's novels. In 1825, 



THE FIRST CREATIVE PERIOD. 109 

when the Erie canal was opened, it ran its entire length 
through virgin forests. The fertile valleys of the Cen- 
tral States were wild land over which herds of buffaloes 
swarmed. Beyond the Mississippi only a few hardy 
adventurers had dared to venture. The settlers fol- 
lowed the parallels of latitude. Little New England 
villages sprung up about the Great Lakes; the Virginians 
poured into Kentucky and the neighboring regions; 
while the Carolinas and Georgia sent their settlers into 
the territory to the south. 

The conditions throughout the period were wild and 
picturesque. It was another colonial era. The new 
and strange environment; the Indians and the abun- 
dant fauna ; the rush and excitement of border life ; the 
new villages springing up by every stream, were but 
the repetition of the conditions and experience of two 
centuries before. 

Inventions. — Another element, that must be consid- 
ered if we would understand the spirit of the age, was 
the general introduction of several world- 1794. Whit- " 
revolutionizing inventions. Whitney's cot- g m. 
ton gin marks an era in the history of the ^ 7 g hi ^ U gteam- 
South ; the steamboat was a powerful factor Yori/toAibaT 
in the development of our commerce. It 1830. First pas- 

senger train in 

brought Europe many days nearer to America. 

America, and, plying on the Mississippi Svents^heW 

and its branches, it greatly aided in open- ?fj? ph ™. 

ing up the great West. The most rapid egraphiine— 

*■ ° * AVashmgton to 

development followed the introduction Baltimore 
from England of the railroad, and when Morse had per- 
fected the telegraph, the modern era had begun. 



110 AMERICAN LITERATURE. 

Literary Conditions. — (See Godwin's Bryant. For 
Epoch in English Literature, see Arnold, Ch. VII. ; Taine, 
Ch. XVI.) When, as late as 1820, Sidney Smith, in the 
columns of the Edinburgh Review, asked his famous 
question, " Who reads an American book ? " there was, at 
least on his side of the Atlantic, but one answer. Frank- 
lin had been admired throughout England and France 
as a scientist and a statesman, and Edwards had com- 
manded respect as a metaphysician, but no other Ameri- 
can writers were known in Europe. The literary out- 
look, even when viewed by American eyes, was far from 
being a bright one. The most patriotic citizen of the 
new republic could but admit that every literary pro- 
duction in America had been merely a feeble imitation 
of some English model, and that the charge, as Lowell 
expressed it, that 

" They stole Englishmen's books and thought Englishmen's 
thought, 
With English salt on her tail our wild Eagle was caught," 

was true in every particular. 

At the close of the Revolutionary period even the 
imitators had ceased to write; literary production of 
every variety had come almost to a dead stop, and those 
who predicted that America could evolve a native liter- 
ature only after centuries had abundant ground for 
argument. 

The literary situation in America at the close of the 
Revolutionary period has been admirably summed up by 
R. H. Stoddard. 



THE FIRST CREATIVE PERIOD. Ill 

" Authorship, as a craft, had no followers except Charles Brock- 
den Brown, who was still editing the Literary Magazine, and per- 
haps John Dennie, who was editing the Portfolio. The few poets 
of which America boasted were silent. Trumbull, the author of 
M'Fingal, which was published the year before Irving's birth, was 
a judge of the Superior Court ; Dwight, whose Conquest of Canaan 
was published three years later, was merely the president of Yale 
College ; Barlow, whose Vision of Columbus was published two years 
later still, and who had returned to this country after shining 
abroad as a diplomatist, was living in splendor on the banks of the 
Potomac and brooding over that unreadable poem which he ex- 
panded into the epic of the Columbiad ; and Freneau, by all odds 
the best of our early versifiers, who had published a collection of 
his effusions in 1795, had abandoned the muses and was sailing a 
sloop between Savannah, Charleston, and the West Indies ; Pier- 
pont, who was two years younger than Irving, was a private tutor 
in South Carolina ; Dana was a student at Harvard, and Bryant, a 
youth of twelve at Cummington, was scribbling juvenile poems 
which were being published in a newspaper at Northampton. . . . 
Everybody who read fiction was familiar with the novels of Field- 
ing and Smollett, and lovers of political literature were familiar 
with the speeches of Burke and the letters of Junius. Everybody 
read (or could read) the poetical works of Cowper and Burns, 
CampbeH 1 s Pleasures of Hope, and Scott's Lay of the Last Minstrel, 
and whatever else in the shape of verse American publishers 
thought it worth their while to reprint for them." — Life of Irving. 

The publication, in 1809, of Knickerbocker's History 
of Neiv York, Irving's first important work, marks the 
opening of a new era. " It was," writes Professor Beers, 
" the first American book, in the higher departments of 
literature, which needed no apology and stood squarely 
on its own legs." Its date is the birth date of American 
literature. 



VIII. 
WASHINGTON IRVING. 

1783-1859. 

"The father of American Literature." 

" The first ambassador whom the new world of letters sent to the 
old." — Thackeray. 

Dutch New York. — No American city has had a more 
picturesque history or has undergone a more complete 
metamorphosis than New York. In 1664, as New 
Amsterdam, it was a dreamy Dutch village, — its lazy 
windmills and sleepy streets between houses of antique 
architecture contrasting strangely with the wild scenery 
about ifc. For almost half a century it had been the 
headquarters of the Dutch in America, and a century 
of English occupation did not banish the atmosphere 
of Holland from its limits. As late as the beginning of 
the present century, the old Dutch burghers were still 
a prominent element of the population. Often of a sum- 
mer evening they might be seen sitting in the doorways 
of their quaint, gabled houses, built a century before 
of bricks brought from Holland, smoking their long- 
stemmed pipes in peaceful revery. Their whitewashed 
dwellings and picturesque windmills were still a promi- 
nent feature in the landscape. 

Suggested Reading. — " The Historian/' in Bracebridge Hall. 

112 



WASHINGTON IRVING. 113 

Life of Irving (by his nephew, Pierre M. Irving, 
1862 ; by David J. Hill in American Authors Series, 
1879 ; by Charles Dudley Warner in American Men of 
Letters Series, 1881. See also Irvingiana, a collection of 
various tributes to Irving published soon after his death. 
For more extended list of authorities see Reference 
Lists of the Providence Public Library, April, 1883). 

In this quaint old city of fast-fading traditions, 
Washington Irving was born April 3, 1783, the year 
that witnessed the close of the Revolutionary struggle. 
He was but five months old when General Washington 
entered the city just evacuated by the British, and by a 
happy chance he received the blessing of the great man 
of whom he was destined to become the chief biog- 
rapher. Irving's father was English, while his mother 
was of Scotch descent. They had come to America 
scarce twenty years before, and with limited means 
were struggling along with a family of eleven children. 
School privileges under such circumstances were neces- 
sarily limited, but the youthful Irving early acquired 
a voracious appetite for reading, and within his reach 
were the volumes of Chaucer and Spenser and Addison, 
which he well-nigh learned by heart. Throughout his 
boyhood he was fond of solitary excursions, wandering 
often, as he tells us in The Sketch Book, into surrounding 
regions, drinking in eagerly the strange tales told by 
Dutch housewives of the old days, so involved by their 
drowsy imaginations in mystery and romance. 

Required Reading. — "The Author's Account of Himself,' 1 
and " The Voyage." The Sketch Book. 



114 AMERICAN LITERATURE. 

Salmagundi. — The condition of Irving's health, 
always delicate, became in his twenty-first year so 

alarming to his friends that they sent him 
made Emperor to the south of Europe, where he remained 
1805. Trafalgar ^ or ^ w0 y ears « Returning in 1806 com- 
Netson ath ° f pletely cured, he resumed for a time the 
1805. Austeriitz. study of law which his European journey 

had interrupted. But literature appeared 
to him far more attractive than law. Early the follow- 
ing year his exuberant spirits and teeming literary 
fancies found vent in a little periodical entitled Salma- 
gundi, or the Whim-Whams and Opinions of Launcelot 
Langstaff, Esq., and Others. The "others" mentioned 
in the title were Irving's brother William, and his 
brother-in-law, James K. Paulding. The object of the 
publication, as stated in the Salutatory, was "simply 
to instruct the young, reform the old, correct the town, 
and castigate the age." It was published anonymously, 
and created much curiosity and interest. It bubbled 
over with fun, mock seriousness, and whimsical fancies, 
yet, bright as it was, it gave little promise of an original 
American literature. The correction of the town meant 
simply the moulding of it to contemporary London 
standards, and as far as its individuality is concerned it 
might have been written by an Englishman in London. 
After twenty numbers, the young editors tired of their 
play and the publication ceased. 

Suggested Reading. — The Salutatory, Salmagundi, ~No. 1. 
For definition see Dictionary. See also E. A. Duyckinek's Intro- 
duction to Salmagundi, edition of I860, 



WASHINGTON IRVING. 115 

Knickerbocker's History of New York (1809). — 

" Of all mock-heroic works . . . the gayest, the airiest, and the 
least tiresome." — Bryant. 

To the youthful editors of Salmagundi, with their ef- 
fervescent spirits, "the town" seemed a huge comedy 
for their criticism and delight. Nothing escaped them. 
A popular handbook of New York, written in a digni- 
fied, serious style, amused them so immoderately that 
Irving, with his brother Peter, immediately planned a 
burlesque of the work, commencing in all seriousness 
with the creation of the world, and bringing in broad 
caricatures of the Dutch founders of the city. Any- 
thing more serious than an ephemeral parody was not 
once dreamed of. But Irving soon realized the rich- 
ness of the material upon which he had stumbled. He 
found the period of the Dutch supremacy wonderfully 
full of literary possibilities. It was far enough away 
in the past to be robed in the haze of romance, and it 
offered untold opportunities for humorous treatment. 
The subject grew upon the author, and he carefully 
elaborated it. 

The story of Irving's ingenious hoax, which attrib- 
uted the authorship of the history to one Diedrich 
Knickerbocker, an old Dutch gentleman whose disap- 
pearance was duly chronicled in the newspapers of the 
day, is told in the preface of the work. Many were 
deceived by it; all were curious, and when the work, 
which had been published in Philadelphia to increase 
the mystery, appeared, its success was phenomenal. The 



116 AMERICAN LITERATURE. 

descendants of the old Dutch settlers were greatly 
shocked at its liberties, but every one else was delighted 
with its boisterous humor. It was republished in Eng- 
land, and was hailed by Campbell and Scott as a real 
addition to the literature of the world. 

The humor of the book is irresistible. " The author 
makes us laugh," says Bryant, " because he can no more 
help it than we can help laughing." With such per- 
fect art has it been constructed that it has all the grav- 
ity of authentic narration ; indeed it is said to have been 
once gravely quoted by a German editor, Goller, as real 
history. 

Required Reading. — "Account of the Author," in the His- 
tory of New York ; also " Wouter Van Twiller," Book III., ch. 1 ; 
and " The Manners of our Grandfathers," Book III., ch. 3. See 
also " The Author's Apology," in edition of 1860. 

1. The Period of Sketches. — Irving's literary career, 
which opened with the publication of the Knickerbock- 

1. Dutch- er ' s History of New York, may be divided 
Sketches : The ^ n ^° f° ur distinct periods, corresponding to 
fan winkle ™ v the four literary themes which at differ- 
ed ofsieepv 5 " en ^ P ei> i°ds of his life engaged him. The 
HoiWMn interval between 1809 and 1826 may be 
Book - characterized as the period of sketches. 

"DolphHey- . * r . 

liger " in Brace- During the rive years following his first 
bridge Hall. . . 

Tales of a successful book Irving was variously en- 

gwdfer, Part gaged5 firgt ag editor in Philadelphia of 

Wolf erf s Roost, the Analytic Magazine, and afterwards, in 

2. English 1814, as aide-de-camp to Governor Tomp- 

and Random , . nn e -n • • j- 

Sketches: kins. Ihe iollowing year, in connection 



WASHINGTON IRVING. 117 

with the mercantile business of his broth- The Sketch 

Book. 

ers, he sailed for England, intending to be BmcebHdge 

Hall. 

absent only a few months. His literary Tales of a 
fame had preceded him, and he found him- The crayon 
self welcomed in the most exclusive literary Miscellany. 
circles of England. He visited Campbell at Sydenham, 
and dined with, the famous publisher, Murray. In Edin- 
burgh he was the guest of the Scottish critic, Jeffrey, 
and he passed two delightful days with Sir Walter 
Scott at Abbotsford. 

Suggested Reading. — Abbotsford. See, also, Lockhart's Life 
of Scott, Vol. V. 

The Sketch Book (1819). — 

" He colored the shores of the Hudson with the softest hues of 
legend. The banks at Tarry town stretching backward to Sleepy 
Hollow, the broad water of the Tappan Zee, the airy heights of 
the summer Kaatskill, were mere landscape, pleasing scenery only, 
until Irving suffused them with the rosy light of story and gave 
them the human association which is the crowning charm of land- 
scape." — George William Curtis. 

Irving seems to have regarded the History of New 
York simply as a jeu oV esprit, which was in no way an 
introduction to a literary career, and for nine years he 
produced very little. But the failure of the mercantile 
house in which his brothers were large shareholders 
having left him at the age of thirty-six in London with- 
out apparent means of support, he immediately took up 
his neglected pen. The first number of The Sketch Book, 
which was written in England, was published in Amer- 
ica in 1819. It contained six sketches, among which 
was the immortal " Rip Van Winkle." American critics 



118 AMERICAN LITERATURE. 

hailed the book with extravagant praise. The second 
and third numbers appeared in rapid succession. Upon 
the recommendation of Sir Walter Scott, the English 
publisher Murray was induced to undertake an edition. 
Its success was instantaneous. The author became the 
literary " lion " of the day. Lockhart declared in Black- 
wood that " Mr. Washington Irving is one of our first 
favorites among the English writers of this age, and he 
is not a bit the less so for being born in America." 
Byron pronounced The Broken Heart " one of the finest 
things ever written on earth." 

The Sketch Book contains some of Irving's most 
dainty work. Four, at least, of the sketches will endure 
as long as does the language. " Rip Van Winkle " and 
" The Legend of Sleepy Hollow " have made the High- 
lands of the Hudson classic ground, and have added two 
distinct characters to the literature of the world. The 
paper on " Stratford on Avon " has thrown a new spell 
over the birthplace of Shakespeare, and no one now 
visits this memory-haunted spot without Irving's work 
in his satchel. For grace and pensive beauty, the 
" Westminster Abbey " and " The Angler " are worthy 
to be compared with the best of Addison or Goldsmith. 

Required Reading. — " Rip Van Winkle," " The Legend of 
Sleepy Hollow," "Stratford on Avon." See Benson J. Lossing's 
The Romance of the Hudson, Harper's, Vol. LIL, p. 643. 

Bracebridge Hall (1822). — The careful pictures of 
The Sketch Book had thrown a soft, poetic light over 
English customs and scenes. To Irving the land was 
enchanted ground. Since his childhood he had dreamed 



WASHINGTON IRVING. 119 

of it and idealized it. " Having been born and brought 
up in a new country," he wrote in Bracebridge Hall, 
" yet educated from infancy in the literature of an old 
one, my mind was early fitted with historical and poeti- 
cal associations connected with places and manners and 
customs of Europe ; but which could rarely be applied 
to those of my own country." To Irving England was 
flooded with the mellow atmosphere of romance. In 
Bracebridge Hall he draws ideal pictures of English 
country life, of the old-fashioned manor house and its 
inmates ; of the beauty, cheer, and joy of the Yuletide ; 
of St. Mark's eve and May-day ; of " the old landmarks 
of English manners ; " of the English country gentle- 
man of the old school. It was the Sir Roger de Coverley 
Papers, from a new standpoint. " Irving rediscovered 
England ; " he opened a new vista ; he poured over it 
the same mellow light with which he had flooded Sleepy 
Hollow and the dells of the Hudson. 

After a winter at Paris and a season at Dresden, in 
1824 Irving was paid by Murray .£1500 for the manu- 
script of The Tales of a Traveller, but the book was far 
below its predecessors in interest and in literary merit, 
and was severely criticised on both sides of the Atlantic. 

Required Reading. — " The Author," "The Stout Gentle- 
man," and " May-Day," from Bracebridge Hall. 

2. The Period of Spanish Themes (1826-1832). — In 
1826 Irving received a letter from Alexander H. Everett, 
then United States Minister at Madrid, urging him to 
come to Spain at once to undertake the translation of 



120 AMERICAN LITERATURE. 

Navarrete's Voyages of Columbus, then in press. But 
when once in Spain amid the abundant materials in the 
Spanish Archives, Irving abandoned the idea of the 
translation and immediately began to collect materials 
for a new life of the great discoverer. 

He soon found himself in a wonderland. The 
period of Spanish history covered by the life of Colum- 
bus is full of romance. It resounds with the clash of 
arms and glitters with the splendor of pageants and the 
pomp of military display. Few periods have been more 
filled with stirring incidents. The Moorish splendors of 
Granada, the expulsion of the Arabs after nearly eight 
centuries in Spain, the dreamy old Alhambra refurnished 
for the brilliant court of Ferdinand and Isabella, the In- 
quisition with its horrors, the discovery of a new world, 
— all this was crowded into one reign, while back of it 
stretched the hazy vista of centuries of conflict with the 
Moors, almost the only records of which are vague tra- 
ditions and romantic tales, embellished by all the wild 
extravagance of the Oriental imagination. 

Required Reading. — The Preface to The Conquest of Spain. 

The Life of Columbus was but the starting-point of 
Irving's Spanish investigations. The Moorish chroni- 
cles and arabesque legends of Spain were all untold, 
and to Americans, at least, the Spanish landscape was 
unfamiliar. So fully did Irving enter into the spirit of 
this period, and so faithfully did he portray its scenery 
and events, that he has become a part of the perennial 
charm that clings to this southern land. 



WASHINGTON IRVING. 121 

It was Irving's design, as he tells us in the preface 

to his Mahomet, to write a series of works Mahomet and 

"illustrative of the dominion of the Arabs ^ uccess °™- 

in Spain," but this purpose he never ac- Legends of the 

complished. Although each of his seven Spain. 1835. 

Spanish books within its limits aims to be cies. 1833. 

exhaustive, there are important historical ^Qranadaf 

epochs untouched. The books are, in 1829 - 

A The Alhamora. 

reality, detached episodes of Spanish his- 1832. 

. P . n i • j • n l The Life and 

tory, some ot them historically accurate, voyages of 

t. ,i rr\ £ m Columbus. 

some oi them mere romance, lo iollow ^s. 

the sequence of events they should be read ^^3^' 

in the order designated at the margin. covery. 1831. 

Mahomet and his Successors, which is generally re- 
garded as an inferior work, was the last of the series 
in order of production. It had been projected while 
Irving was first at Madrid, and had been several times 
revised and cast aside before its final appearance. The 
book, which recounts the rise and spread of Mohamme- 
danism up to the eve of the Arab invasion of Spain, 
closes with the half promise of a history of the Moorish 
Conquest : " Whether it will ever be our lot to resume 
this theme, to cross with the Moslem hosts the Strait 
of Hercules, and narrate their memorable conquest of 
Gothic Spain, is one of [the] uncertainties of mortal 
life." The book hinted at was never written. The 
period is represented only by the Legends of the Con- 
quest of Spain, a collection of dim traditions of Don 
Roderick, " the last of the Goths," and of the sad days 
that followed his overthrow. The Spaniards were either 



122 AMERICAN LITERATURE. 

annihilated or driven to the mountains. Province after 
province fell before the Moors. The Moorish Chronicles 
is a record of the campaigns of two kings, Count Fernan 
Gonzalez of Castile and Fernando III. of Leon, who 
succeeded for a time in checking the tide of invasion. 

The Conquest of Granada. — 

"Nearly eight hundred years were past and gone since the 
Arabian invaders had sealed the perdition of Spain. . . . Since 
that disastrous event, kingdom after kingdom had been gradually 
recovered by the Christian princes, until the single but powerful 
territory of Granada alone remained under dominion of the 
Moors." — Chapter I. 

It was left for the brilliant reign of Ferdinand and 

Isabella utterly to overthrow the Mohammedan power 

in Spain. In 1481 the ruler of Granada refused to pay 

the tribute. Ten years of conflict, as full of heroic 

achievement and poetic incident as the siege of ancient 

Troy, were necessary to reduce the Alhambra, the last 

Moorish stronghold. The Conquest of Granada seems 

like fiction. Although real history, it is a book, as 

some one has said, that a young lady might read by 

mistake for a romance. 

Required Reading. — " How Queen Isabella arrived in 
Camp," and " The Surrender of Granada." 

The Alhambra. — 

"The beautiful Spanish Sketch Book." — Prescott. 

" It has the languid beauty of a Moorish song." 

lt The Alhambra is an anoient fortress or castellated palace of 

the Moorish kings of Granada, where they held dominion over this 

their boasted terrestrial paradise, and made their last stand for 

empire in Spain. ... It is a Moslem pile in the midst of a Chris- 



WASHINGTON IRVING. 123 

tian land ; an oriental palace amid the Gothic edifices of the West, 
an elegant memento of a brave, intelligent, and graceful people, 
who conquered, ruled, and passed away." — The Alhambra. 

During the summer of 1829, Irving for several weeks 

took up his residence in this dreamy old palace. He 

wandered through its halls and courts at all hours of 

the day and night. He gathered its fast-fading legends 

and buried himself in its golden atmosphere. The 

Alhambra was the result, a book like the Arabian 

Nights, full of the passion and splendor of the Orient. 

In many respects it is the best of Irving's Spanish 

works. 

Required Reading. — " The Palace of the Alhambra," 
"Moonlight on the Alhambra," and "The Legend of the Rose 
of the Alhambra." 

The Life and Voyages of Columbus, a book upon which 
Irving expended the unrelenting labor of months, is 
the most serious and weighty of all the author's works 
on Spanish themes. It has taken its place as the stand- 
ard English biography of Columbus, a position that it 
will doubtless always retain. Other and more scholarly 
works have been written and Irving's estimate of the 
discoverer has been sharply criticised, but the book will 
never lose its hold on the great mass of English readers. 
The Spanish Voyages of Discovery is but a sequel to the 
Life of Columbus, recounting the steps taken by Spain to 
gain her American possessions. 

Required Reading. — "The Discovery of Land." 

3. The Period of Western American Themes (1832- 
1846). — In 1829 Irving was called from Spain to become 



124 AMERICAN LITERATURE. 

the American Secretary of Legation at London, an office 
which he held with credit for three years. In 1832, 
after an absence of seventeen years, he returned to 
America, where he was received with almost national 
honors. So rapidly had his country developed that he 
was a stranger amid the scenes of his childhood. He 
scarcely recognized his native city. He was like his 
own Rip Van Winkle. A new life and a new spirit 
seemed to animate everything. The vast territory to 
the westward that had been terra incognita in his boy- 
A Tour of the no0 ^ was now being rapidly filled by the 
Praines. 1835. ^ Q f immigration. The frontier line was 

Astoria. 1836. b 

Captain Bonne- now beyond the Mississippi, and it was fast 
pushing westward. He was filled with a 
desire to acquaint himself with his native land which he 
had so long neglected. He " had a great curiosity," as 
he expressed it, to know and see the wild life of the 
West, and accordingly he at once, with several compan- 
ions, made a journey among the Indian agencies from 
St. Louis up the banks of the Missouri. 

Suggested Reading. — For Irving's feelings upon his return 
to America, see the Introduction to A Tour of the Prairies. 

A Tour of the Prairies, which was the literary result 
of this journey, is the record of a month's expedition 
from Fort Gibson up the Arkansas to near the present 
boundary of Kansas. Giving, as it does, a faithful pict- 
ure of the West of that day, it is a valuable addition 
to the all too scanty records of a picturesque era in 
our history. Edward Everett, in a review of the book, 
wrote : 



WASHINGTON IRVING. 125 

"It is a sort of sentimental journey, a romantic excursion, in 
which nearly all the elements of several different kinds of writing 
are beautifully and gayly blended into a production almost sui 
generis. . . . We thank him for turning these poor barbarous 
steppes into classical land, and joining his inspiration to that of 
Cooper in breathing life and fire into a circle of imagery which 
was not known before to exist, for the purposes of the imagination." 

This book was followed the next year by Astoria, a 
history of the fur- trading settlement at the mouth of 
the Columbia River, written at the request of John 
Jacob Astor. In this work Irving was assisted by his 
nephew, Pierre M. Irving, who relieved the author of 
much of the drudgery of collecting materials. 

It was while engaged in this book that Irving met 
at the house of Mr. Astor a noted soldier and hunter, 
in whose stories he became intensely interested. The 
outcome of this chance meeting was The Adventures of 
Captain Bonneville, a book of thrilling adventure among 
Indians and wild beasts in the Rocky Mountains, with 
accurate pictures of the frontier life of those early days. 

Suggested Reading. — The Introductions to Astoria and 
Captain Bonneville. 

4. The Period of Biographical Work (1846-1859).— 

In 1842 Irving was appointed Minister to Spain, and 
upon his return in 1846 he settled down in his rural 
home at " Sunnyside " on the Hudson to spend the last 
years of his life. The surroundings and the traditions 
of the old Dutch mansion which Irving remodelled into 
a sort of American " Abbotsford," were given to the 
world in 1855, in the volume Wolf erf s Boost. Here 



126 AMERICAN LITERATURE. 

Irving produced three biographies. The Mahomet has 
been already mentioned. In 1849 he published the 
Life of Oliver Goldsmith, the most charming of all his 
biographies, and probably the best study ever written 
of the thriftless, lovable poet. 

But the book which Irving wished to be the crowning 
work of his life was The Life of Washington. Upon it 
he expended the most faithful labor, pushing so thor- 
oughly his investigations that few additional facts of 
importance in the life of the great leader have since 
been discovered. The work was done under great 
difficulties. Old age was creeping upon the author. 
Toward the last the wOrk dragged painfully, and the 
fifth and last volume appeared only a short time before 
the author's death. The chief charms of the book are 
its clear and beautiful style, and its bright, breezy 
descriptions. Although not a biography of the very 
highest rank, it is in every way worthy of its position 
as the standard life of a remarkable man and the crown- 
ing work of a brilliant literary career. 

Irving' s Style. — (Richardson, I., 278-280 ; Whip- 
ple's American Literature ; Warner's Life of Irving ; 
Curtis' Literary and Social Essays. - ) Though gifted 
with moderate power to create plots and characters, 
Irving was pre-eminently a story-teller. He was quick 
to detect the literary possibilities in seemingly unprom- 
ising material, and he could make much from very 
little, as in his " Stout Gentleman." His canvas was 
never a broad one. Even his longest histories are but 
aggregations of brilliantly told episodes. He delighted 



JAMES KIRKE PAULDING. 127 

in gentle themes, in the Indian Summer days of the 
past. From all his work breathes his sweet, gentle 
nature. His English is pure and elegant; his sentences, 
each of sparkling clearness, ripple past like the music 
of a summer brook. His humor, at first lawless and 
boisterous, then more subdued and delicate in his later 
works, is everywhere present, but is wholly without 
bitterness. 

His Character. — 

" He . . . was most finished, polished, easy, witty, quiet and 
socially the equal of the most refined Europeans. ... In America 
the love and regard for Irving was a national sentiment. It seemed 
to me during a year's travel in the country, as if no one ever aimed 
a blow at Irving. All men held their hands from that harmless, 
friendly peacemaker. . . . The gate of his own little charming 
domain on the beautiful Hudson River was forever swinging before 
visitors who came to him. . . . He had loved once in his life. 
The lady he loved died ; and he whom all the world loved never 
sought to replace her. I can't say how much the thought of that 
fidelity has touched me. Does not the very cheerfulness of his 
after life add to the pathos of that untold story?" — William 
Makepeace Thackeray. 

Irving died at "Sunnyside," Nov. 28, 1859, and was 

buried on a beautiful Indian Summer day, near the 

Sleepy Hollow which he had made immortal. 

Required Reading. — Longfellow's "In the Churchyard at 
Tarrytown," Lowell's 'j, Fable for Critics." 

James Kirke Paulding (1779-1860). 

Life (Literary Life of J. K. Paulding, by his son, 
William Irving Paulding. See also Irving's Life of 
Irving). 



128 AMERICAN LITERATURE. 

Closely associated with the name of Washington 
Irving is that of his brother-in-law and early literary 
The Dutch- partner, James K. Panlding. Although 
man's Fireside, foe early work of these authors, as seen 

Westward Ho ! in Salmagundi, was almost identical in 

1832. . . 

Life of Wash- style and spirit, and although their choice 

l The°oid Oonti- °^ literary themes shows many striking 
nentai. 1846. coincidences, there was, nevertheless, lit- 

The Puritan ,..,., ,., 

and his Daugh- tie similarity between the two. Unlike 

ter. 1849. 

Irving, Paulding never outgrew Salma- 
gundi. His humor is always boisterous, never chaste 
and sensitive. Often it is crude and caustic, leaving 
behind it a rankling wound. The artistic sense, the 
delicate touch, the tender sympathy which made " Rip 
Van Winkle " immortal, are too often lacking in The 
Dutchman's Fireside, and, in spite of its humor and its 
pathos, the book is forgotten. 

Paulding's life was one of ceaseless activity. His 
published volumes, which number almost as many as 
living's, consist of novels, short stories, sketches, sat- 
ires, parodies, burlesques, political works, poems, and an 
excellent Life of Q-eorge Washington. Like Irving, he 
delighted in broad pictures of the old Dutch settlers. 
In some of his sketches his humor is as rollicking and 
as uncontrolled as Irving's in The History of New York. 
His Lay of the Scottish Fiddle (1813), a clever parody 
of Scott's Lay of the Last Minstrel (1805), then at the 
height of its popularity, and his novel Koningsmarke 
(1823), a burlesque upon the Indian of Cooper's novel 
The Pioneers, are characteristic productions. 



NATHANIEL PARKER WILLIS. 129 

Paulding's best work is his novel The Dutchman's 

Fireside. 

"It is a genuine, life-like story, full of stirring incidents, of 
picturesque scenes, and striking characters, for which the author's 
early experiences had furnished the abundant materials. The 
amiable and whimsical peculiarities of the Dutch settlers, the 
darker tints of Indian character, and the vicissitudes of frontier 
life, have rarely been more powerfully sketched." — Underwood. 

The descriptions of natural scenery are drawn with 
loving care. The author wields a poet's pen when he 
writes of the springtime, the pathless woods, and the 
sparkling Hudson. 

During the administration of Van Buren, Paulding 
was Secretary of the Navy. His political views are 
well known. In all things intensely conservative, he 
defended even slavery, strengthening his position by 
publishing, in 1836, a treatise entitled Slavery in the 
United States. 

Suggested Reading. — The Dutchman's Fireside. 

Nathaniel Parker Willis (1806-1867). 

"No other American author has represented with equal vivacity 
and truth the manners of the age." — Thackeray. 

Life (by Henry A. Beers, in American Men of Letters 
Series. See also Goodrich's Recollections of a Lifetime. 
The collected writings of Willis have been _ 

° Poems. 

issued, in thirteen volumes, by the Scrib- PencUUngs by 

. the Way. 

ners > Letters from 

Though of New England parentage, UnderaBHdge. 

& 6 l & ' People I Have 

born in Portland, Maine, only one year Met. 

,,. T en n .. -,. t Paul Fane, a 

before Longfellow, and receiving his edu- novel. 



130 AMERICAN LITERATURE. 

cation at Yale College, Willis belongs with "The 
Knickerbockers," that little group of writers that for 
a long time made New York the literary capital of 
America. Few authors ever started in life with 
greater promise. While yet an undergraduate at Yale 
he achieved a widespread literary fame with the series 
of Scripture poems, which, in spite of. Lowell's joke 
about " inspiration and water," are their author's best 
claim to remembrance as a poet. From this time 
until the rise of Longfellow and the New England 
writers, he enjoyed the distinction of being the most 
popular American poet. 

Encouraged by his poetic successes, Willis, after leav- 
ing college, went to New York, where, in 1828, he 
became, with George P. Morris, the song writer, associ- 
ate editor of The New York Mirror. Two years later, 
with live hundred dollars in his pocket and the promise 
of ten dollars for every letter he might write to The 
Mirror, Willis, then in his twenty-fourth year, started 
for Europe. In Paris he became for a time an attache 
to the American Legation, an honor which was of great 
service, since it admitted him freely to the best society 
of the capital. After a prolonged journey through 
Southern Europe, Turkey, and parts of Asia Minor, he 
returned to London, where, in 1835, he republished his 
letters to The Mirror in a three volume edition under 
the title Pencilling^ by the Way. The popularity of 
the book was immediate. Although its personalities 
made many bitter enemies, it was on the whole extrava- 
gantly praised on both sides of the Atlantic. 



f 
NATHANIEL PARKER WILLIS. 131 

" At this day it has something of the interest of a histrionic 
performance, which is highly comic to one who has been behind 
the scenes. Here was a young American, rubbing along through 
Europe on the slenderest resources, eking out his weekly revenue 
by an occasional poem or story, but always in mortal fear of com- 
ing to the bottom of his purse, and all the time he wrote in the 
tone and style of a young prince, conveying the impression that 
castles and palaces, chariots and horses, and all the splendors of 
aristocratic life, were just as familiar to him as the air he breathed. 
. . . He saw the outside of its gay and splendid life, and this 
he described in his Pencillings, with a vividness and grace which 
have rarely been equalled. . . . He was under a spell which 
blinded him to the true nature of what he looked upon and caused 
him to give a report of it which has misled in some degree the 
American people ever since." — James Parton. 

Willis returned to America in 1837, and, with his 
wife, whom he had married in England, lived for several 
years at " Glenmary " on the Susquehanna near Owego, 
New York. In 1846, after establishing with Morris The 
Home Journal, a graceful society paper, having disposed 
of his Owego home, he settled down to pass the rest of 
his life at his quiet country residence " Idlewild," on 
the Hudson. During his last years his powers were 
much impaired by an incurable malady, which rendered 
imperative frequent trips to milder climates, but this 
did not stop his tireless literary production. 

His Literary Style. — (Lowell's Fable for Critics ; 
Poe's Literati; Beers' Life of Willis; Richardson, II.; 
Whipple's Essays and Reviews, I. ; Tuckerman's Ameri- 
can Literature.) The publications of N. P. Willis, 
which number nearly thirty titles, cover an exceedingly 
wide literary range. They include books of travel, 
journals, letters, sketches, dramas, poetry, biography, 



132 ' AMERICAN LITERATURE. 

criticism, ephemeral jottings, and one novel. The 
greater number of his books are collections of miscel- 
laneous contributions to The Journal and other maga- 
zines. 

In the words of George Ticknor Curtis, Willis was 
the master of " a marvellously easy, graceful, half-flip- 
pant and wholly enjoyable style of prose writing." Poe 
declared that " as a writer of sketches, properly called, 
Mr. Willis is unequalled. Sketches, especially of 
society, are his forte." The word " jaunty " has been 
overworked in connection with Willis, yet no word 
sums up more completely his personality. His greatest 
literary faults are his tendencies to over ornament and 
his fondness for superficial glitter. 

" His prose has a natural grace of its own 
And enough of it too, if he'd let it alone ; 
But he twitches and jerks so, one fairly gets tired 
And is forced to forgive where one might have admired ; 
Yet whenever it slips away free and unlaced 
It runs like a stream with a musical waste, 
And gurgles along with the liquidest sweep — 
'Tis not deep as a river, but who'd have it deep ? " 

— A Fable for Critics. 

His poems, written in smooth blank verse, are simple 
and impressive, often pathetic. The most popular of 
his Scriptural poems was " Absalom " ; the best of his 
secular poems are " Unseen Spirits," greatly admired by 
Poe, and the " Belfry Pigeon." 

Although nearly all of his writings were of an ephem- 
eral nature, no author ever wrote with more painstaking 
care than Willis. 



NATHANIEL PARKER WILLIS. 133 

" He bestowed upon everything he did, even upon slight and 
transient paragraphs, the most careful labor, making endless eras- 
ures and emendations. On an average he erased one line out of 
every three that he wrote, and on one page of his editorial writing 
there were but three lines left unaltered." — James Parton. 

The author's best work is contained in Pencillings by 
the Way and in the thoughtful Letters from Under a 
Bridge, so highly praised by Lowell. It was Willis' 
father, the Rev. Nathaniel Willis, who, in 1827, estab- 
lished in Boston the well-known Youth's Companion. 

Required Reading. — "Unseen Spirits," "The Widow of 
!Nain." Selections from Pencillings by the Way. 



IX. 

THE NOVELISTS. 

The Perspective of American History. — Although in 
England the first quarter of the Nineteenth Century 
1787-1849 was mar ^ e( i by the appearance of a most 

Maria Edge- brilliant school of novelists, in America 

worth. 

1771-1832. the six romances of Charles Brockden 

1775-1817. Brown continued to stand alone as repre- 

™ e ^? en ' sentatives of our imaginative prose. The 

1776-1850. ^ & r 

Jane Porter. treatment by British critics of American 
Samuel Lover, books had been little short of brutal. A 
Mary^kit- deadly provincialism and a firmly fixed 
ford - idea that America was barren of possibili- 

ties of romance, had put a bann on all attempts at 
fiction. It was not until the century was in its third 
decade that a discovery was made that rendered a dis- 
tinctively American novel possible. This discovery, 
which, once pointed out, was obvious enough, was simply 
the fact that our Colonial and Revolutionary periods 
seem much farther away than they really are. In the 
words of Cooper: 

" When the mind reverts to the earliest days of Colonial history, 
the period seems remote and obscure, the thousand changes that 
thicken along the links of recollections, throwing back the origin 
of the Nation to a day so distant as seemingly to reach the mists 
of time, and yet four lives of ordinary duration would suffice to 

134 



THE NOVELISTS. 135 

transmit from month to month, in the form of tradition, all that 
civilized man has achieved within the limits of the Republic." — 
The Pathfinder. 

It is this fact alone that has rendered a distinctively 
American novel possible. Without this even Hawthorne 
would have been driven to seek foreign themes. 

Although Cooper was not the first to recognize this 
possibility for American romance, he was, nevertheless, 
the first completely to demonstrate it to the world. 
After he had produced The Spy, The Pioneers, and The 
Pilot, there was no one who did not realize that a vast 
empire full of untold possibilities had been added to the 
realm of fiction. 

James Fenimore Cooper (1789-1851). 

" The first American author to carry our flag outside the limits of 
our language. ' ' — Brander Matthews. 

Life (in consequence of Cooper's dying request to 
his family, no authorized biography has ever been 
attempted. T. R. Lounsbury's admirable study of 
Cooper in the American Men of Letters Series is, how- 
ever, a scholarly and accurate summing up of his life- 
work and character. The introductions contributed 
by the author's daughter, Susan Fenimore Cooper, to 
the "Sea Tales," and "Leather-Stocking Tales"; A 
Glance Backivard by the same writer in the Atlantic 
Monthly for February, 1887, and T. S. Livermore's 
History of Qooperstown, contain much valuable infor- 
mation). 



136 AMERICAN LITERATURE. 

Cooper was born in Burlington, New Jersey, Sept. 15, 
1789. 

" In 1785 the author's father, who had extensive tracts of land 
in this wilderness [about Oswego Lake, New York], arrived with 
a party of surveyors. ... At the commencement of the follow- 
ing year the settlement began. . . . The author was brought an 
infant into this valley [Nov. 10, 1790] and all his first impres- 
sions were here obtained." — Introduction to The Pioneers. 

The Cooperstown of this early day can easily be 
pictured after reading The Pioneers, which, although 
fictitious in its events and characters, is a minute and 
loving study of the surroundings of its author's boy- 
hood. The wild beauty of the forest-bound lake, the 
vast forest stretching for leagues into the unknown, 
mysterious west, the picturesque frontier population, the 
vanishing Indian, the still-abundant wild game, — all 
these made deep impressions upon the susceptible mind 
of the boy. 

In 1802, when a mere lad of thirteen, Cooper was 
sent to Yale College. Three years later, with his father's 
consent, he left college to go to sea. His ambition was 
to join the navy, but since practical seamanship was 
demanded as a prerequisite, he immediately shipped in 
a merchant vessel before the mast. A rough voyage of 
a year's duration followed, to London and Cowes, on the 
Mediterranean, and back again to New York. He then 
enlisted in the United States Navy, where he served with 
credit for nearly three years. In 1811 his marriage, 
which was a most happy one, closed the first period of 
his life. His literary career, which now opened, may 
be divided into four distinct periods. 



THE NOVELISTS. 137 

1. TJie First Creative Period (1820-1830). 

The story of Cooper's first novel has been often told. 
He had been reading one of the cheap English novels 
of the time, when, throwing it down in p recaut ion. 
disgust, he remarked to his wife that he The s pv- 
could write a better one himself. The The Pilot. 
result was Precaution, a wretchedly dull Lionel Lincoln. 
novel of English society life. Its failure Mohicans. 
was an inevitable one, for its author was ?? e p ™* r ™- 

The Bed Rover. 

writing on a subject of which he knew The Wept o/ 
absolutely nothing. But his friends were The Water _ 
quick to see that in those parts where he Wltch - 
described familiar scenes he showed remarkable promise. 
He was urged to try again with a familiar subject. 
Accordingly, in 1821, he finished The Spy, a work of 
the first rank. Never was a novel hailed with more en- 
thusiasm. England, as well as America, was delighted, 
and Cooper's fame was secure. The Spy was followed 
the next year by The Pioneers, the first of the Leather- 
Stocking series. 

The anonymous author of Waverley had produced 
in 1821 The Pirate, a novel whose scenes are laid 
partly on the sea. At a dinner in New York, in 1822, 
the company was nearly agreed that the unknown 
author of the series, to describe nautical things so accu- 
rately, must have been at some time in his life a sailor. 
As Scott, whose name had been guessed by some in 
connection with the Waverley series, had never been 
to sea, the conclusion was therefore inevitable. Cooper, 



138 AMERICAN LITERATURE. 

speaking from the knowledge of a practical sailor, 
declared that the book furnished abundant signs of 
being written by a landsman. To prove his assertion 
he proposed himself to write a nautical novel. The 
result was The Pilot, the first novel of the sea, a book 
which opened up a vast literary field before unknown. 
Cooper, now fairly embarked on the sea of literature, 
continued to write novel after novel at the rate of one 
a year. 

When, in June, 1826, Cooper sailed with his family 
for Europe, his popularity had reached its highest point. 
He was everywhere in Europe and America hailed as 
the " American Scott." 

2. The Period of Controversy (1830-1840). 

" Here's Cooper who's written six volumes to show 
He's as good as a lord." — Lowell. 

(See Greeley's Recollections of a Busy Life, and Par- 
ton's Life of Greeley, Ch. XVIII.) Commencing in 1830 
Cooper entered upon a bitter decade of controversy, dur- 
ing which he produced no novels worthy of the name. 

To understand fully the position in which the novel- 
ist soon found himself, one should study the character 
The Bravo. °^ tne man - Intensely proud, positive 
TheHeiden- and uncompromising in his convictions, 

maur. ... 

The Headsman, he could brook no criticism or opposition. 

The MoniHns. Added to this, he was intensely patriotic. 

Bound. Few men have ever loved their native land 

HomeasFound. more t h an h e# j n Europe he naturally 

Navy. found that his views concerning America 



THE NOVELISTS. 139 

were not the prevailing ones. The patronizing airs of 
the English galled him. He found things on every 
hand in the governments and customs of Europe to 
criticise and condemn. 

His next novels, The Bravo, The Heidenmaur, and The 
Headsman, all deal with European scenes. Two of 
them, laid respectively in the aristocratic cities of 
Berne and of Venice, are bitter attacks on European 
society. The story is lost in a mass of arguments and 
denunciation. He exalts republican institutions; he 
assails everything European and tries to apply Ameri- 
can principles everywhere. The results were far from 
what he expected. The American press, so far from 
sympathizing with him, rather criticised his position, — 
a fact which exasperated him almost beyond bounds. 
It was at this time that he published in rapid succession 
ten volumes of European travels and The Monikins, the 
most bitter and unreasonable of novels. 

In November, 1833, Cooper arrived in New York 
after an absence of seven years. His experience with 
the American press had embittered him against his 
countrymen. His long residence abroad had changed 
his views so that he soon began to criticise unsparingly 
American customs. Homeward Bound and Home as 
Found are caustic sermons to the American people. 
Naturally he was assailed in turn. The press all over 
the land attacked and ridiculed him. His History of 
the Navy, which is really as fine a thing in its line as 
was ever written, was bitterly criticised for its alleged 
unfairness. Cooper knew no retreat. He began a 



140 AMERICAN LITERATURE. 

stubborn and heroic fight with the whole American 
people. He prosecuted suit after suit against some of 
the leading papers of America for libel, at one time 
having on hand as many as twenty suits with different 
journals. In these he was usually victorious, but the 
victories were without spoils or glory. 

3. Second Creative Period (1840-1846). 

During the six years following the publication of the 
The Pathfinder. History of the Navy, Cooper produced his 
Castiif. 8 ° f strongest work. The Pathfinder and The 
The Deerslayer. Deerslayer, the crowning creations of his 

The Two Admi- . n . io .„ i hoai 

rah. genius, appeared in 1840 and 1841 re- 

Wmg aUd spectively. Mercedes of Castile, the story 

Wyandotte. f the memorable voyage of Columbus, is 

ford. not without value; Wyandotte, a tedious 

A^hore and tale of the Revolution, full of religious 

The Chain- speculations, is a satire on the Puritans ; 

bearer. 

Satanstoe. while the last four are tales of early New 

York history full of life and interest. 



4. Period of Decline (1846-1850). 

"Cooper's fame would not have been a whit lessened, if every line 
he wrote after The Chainbearer had never seen the light." — Louns- 
bury. 

These novels are mere reproductions of what he had 

The Redskins, done much better before ; they are full of 

ac ter. fierce ill-nature and trite lectures to his 

The Crater. 

Oak Openings, countrymen. The Sea Lions, a tale of 



THE NOVELISTS. 141 

the Antarctic Ocean, is excellent while it The Sea Lions - 

i Ways of the 

keeps on the water. His last book, Ways Hour, 
of the Hour, is an attack on the American jury system. 
After a most liberal selection, only fifteen of Cooper's 
thirty-two novels are worthy of study. These may be 
divided into three groups. 

I. THE LEATHER-STOCKING TALES. 

" A drama in five acts." 

"If anything from the pen of the author is at all to outlive him- 
self, it is unquestionably the series of the Leather-Stocking Tales." — 
Cooper. 

" Leather-Stocking is one of the few original characters, perhaps the 
only great original character that American fiction has added to the 
literature of the world." — Lounsbury. 

(See Introduction to the Leather-Stocking Tales, and the Intro- 
ductions to each of the five novels ; see also A Fable for Critics and 

Brander Matthews' Americanisms and Briticisms.) 

The Deerslayer. 
" The order in which the several books appeared j% e i, ast f t h e 

was essentially different from that in which they Mohicans. 

would have been presented to the world had the The Pathfinder. 

, £ ,, . . j - , , ,, j The Pioneers. 

regular course 01 their incidents been consulted. „, p • ■ 

In The Pioneers, the first of the series written, the 
Leather-Stocking is represented as already old, and driven from 
his early haunts in the forest by the sound of the axe and the 
smoke of the settler. The Last of the Mohicans, the next book in 
the order of publication, carried the reader back to a much earlier 
period in the history of our hero, representing him as middle-aged 
and in the fullest vigor of manhood. In The Prairie his career 
terminates, and he is laid in his grave. There it was originally 
the intention to leave him, . . . but a latent regard for this char- 
acter induced the author to resuscitate him in The Pathfinder, a 
book that was not long after succeeded by The Deerslayer, thus 
completing the series. While the five books . . . were originally 
published in the order j ust mentioned, that of the incidents, inso- 



142 AMERICAN LITERATURE. 

much as they are connected with the career of their principal char- 
acter, is . . . very different. Taking the life of the Leather-Stocking 
as a guide, The Deer slayer should have been the opening book, for 
in that work he is seen just merging into manhood ; to be suc- 
ceeded by The Last of the Mohicans, The Pathfinder, The Pioneers, 
and The Prairie." — Author's Introduction. 

It will aid the memory to note that this is also the 
alphabetical order. 

There is little doubt that the world's idea of the 
Indian has been gained from the Leather-Stocking 
Tales, and that the Indian as painted by Cooper will 
be the Indian of literature for all time. Whether Chin- 
gachgook, Uncas, and Hist were true to nature in every 
respect may be open to doubt, but this matters but 
little. 

" It is the privilege of all writers of fiction, more particularly 
when their works aspire to the elevation of romance, to present 
the beau-ideal of their character to the reader. This it is which 
constitutes poetry, and to suppose that the red man is to be repre- 
sented only in the squalid misery, or in the degraded moral state 
that certainly more or less belongs to his condition, is, we appre- 
hend, taking a very narrow view of an author's privileges. Such 
criticism would have deprived the world of even Homer." — Intro- 
duction to Leather- Stocking Tales. 

Required Reading. — The Pioneers, Ch. III. and Ch. 
XXXIII. ; The Last of the Mohicans, Ch. XVIII. and Ch. XXX.; 
The Deerslayer, Ch. XVI. ; The Pathfinder, Ch. L; The Prairie, 
Ch. XXXIV. 

H. TALES OF THE SEA. 

" No writer has ever rivalled him in his wonderful pictures of swift 
vessels riding before the wind, chasing each other, sinking each other 
in mad contests in the midst of the tempest or dancing on the summer 
waves. His ships are drawn with the accuracy of a Flemish artist." 
— Eugene Lawrence. 



THE NOVELISTS. 143 

Cooper added the ocean as well as the forest to the 
realm of literature. It is hard in these days, when novels 
of the sea fairly flood the market, to realize that the 
origin of this kind of literature was so recent. Captain 
Marryat, Clark Russell, and all the hosts of novelists who 
have composed sea-stories are but disciples of Cooper. 

The Pilot is doubtless the best of all Cooper's sea- 
stories. In it is delineated the immortal 

The Pilot. 

Long Tom Coffin of Nantucket, one of the The Red Rover. 
finest of Cooper's creations. The story of ^ t ^ ater ' 
the breathless chase of the American frigate The Two 
down the British Channel followed by the wing and 
whole English fleet, the wreck of the Wing ' 
Ariel, and the death of Long Tom have few superiors 
in our language, in the field of graphic description. 
The plot of the novel is laid in Revolutionary times 
and the " Pilot " turns out to be the famous seaman, 
Paul Jones. The Two Admirals deals with the British 
navy of American Colonial times, and Wing and Wing is 
a story of the Mediterranean and the adventures of a 
French privateer. 

Required Reading. — The Pilot. If only a part can be read, 
Ch. XXXII. 

III. TALES OF COLONIAL AND REVOLUTIONARY HISTORY. 

The wonderful success that greeted Cooper's first real 
novel, The Spy, was richly deserved, for the book con- 
tains some of his strongest work. It is a story of the 
Revolution, and its leading character, Harvey Birch, 
ranks with Natty Bumppo and Long Tom Coffin. 



144 AMERICAN LITERATURE. 

Lionel Lincoln, or the Leaguer of Boston is famous for 

its graphic description of the engagement 

LiLd Lincoln. at Concord, the running fight to Boston, 

Miles Walling- and the battle of Bunker Hill. Bancroft, 

ford. 

Afloat and the historian, once declared that the last 

Ashore. wag ^q Des t account of the battle ever 

Satanstoe. 

written. Miles Wallingford, Afloat and 
Ashore, and Satanstoe are descriptions of early Colonial 
life in New York, the first two being partly autobio- 
graphical. The last is a powerful novel fully equal to 
some of the Leather-Stocking series. 

Required Reading.— The Spy, Chs. XXXIIL, XXXIV.; 

Lionel Lincoln, describing the battles of Concord and of Bunker 
Hill. 

Coopers Style. — (Richardson, II. 287-329; Brander 
Matthews' Americanisms and Briticisms. See also The 
Fable for Critics.') Cooper wrote rapidly and carelessly, 
seldom correcting his first manuscript dashed o'fT in the 
heat of composition. As a result, the faults of his style 
are very glaring. His words are ill-chosen, his English 
often slovenly in the extreme. Many of his novels are 
without unity of plot and action, running on and on 
like the tale of a garrulous story-teller. He seems to 
have had little idea of what the next chapter of his 
novel was to contain; he often introduces new charac- 
ters near the end of the book ; and sometimes he drags 
in strange and utterly unnecessary scenes with no 
apparent reason whatever. His dialogues are far from 
natural ; his characters act often without sufficient 
motive ; many of his tales are sadly untrue to human 



THE NOVELISTS. 145 

nature ; and the lectures and sermons dragged into his 
novels are just so much dead weight. In addition to 
all this his "females" are shrinking, trembling creat- 
ures, without individuality or life, and his juveniles are 
insipid to the last degree. As Lowell remarked: 

" The women he draws, from one model don't vary, 
All sappy as maples and flat as a prairie." 

But even these faults, grave as they are, — faults that 
would condemn a lesser writer to oblivion, — may be over- 
looked when we sum up Cooper's excellencies. Where 
he was great was in the portrayal of action and the 
rush of incident. In narrative power he has never had 
a superior. In his battle scenes and his description of 
storm and wreck one is carried headlong with the narra- 
tive. The scene actually lives again and one leaves the 
book with a sense almost of personal participation in the 
stirring events recorded there. He had an enthusiasm, 
elevated and genuine, for wild nature. His pictures of 
the pathless forest, the solitary lake, the vast and lonely 
reaches of the prairie, are above criticism. Not only did 
he add a new field to literature, but a new character, — 
perhaps the only one that America has given to fiction. 

" He has drawn yon one character, though, that is new, 
One wild flower he's plucked that is wet with the dew 
Of this fresh western world." — Lowell. 

(For an extreme picture of Cooper's faults, see North 
American Review, July, 1895.) 

Coopers Character, owing to his unfortunate quarrel 
with his countrymen and the fact that, until recently, 



146 AMERICAN LITERATURE. 

no life of him was published, has been greatly mis- 
understood. It is probable that no author of equal 
powers was ever personally more unpopular during his 
life. But, like Swift, Cooper always presented his 
worst side to the world. He was too proud to beg 
for sympathy though he knew that his countrymen 
had misjudged him. He chose rather to fight on 
alone without truce or quarter, even if it were with the 
whole world. 

" As for myself I can safely say that in scarce a circumstance 
of my life, that has brought me the least under the cognizance of 
the public, have I ever been judged justly. In various instances 
have I been praised for acts that were either totally without any 
merit, or at least the particular merit imputed to them ; while I 
have been even persecuted for deeds that deserved praise." — Miles 
Wallingford. 

As a matter of fact, no man was ever kinder or more 
sympathetic than he. His family life was almost per- 
fect in its happiness. As to his other characteristics, 
he possessed, in the words of his biographer, " first, a 
sturdy, hearty, robust, out-door and open-air whole- 
someness devoid of any trace of offence and free from 
all morbid taint; and, secondly, an intense Americanism, 
— ingrained, abiding, and dominant." 

His Cosmopolitan Fame. — "Franklin was the earliest Amer- 
ican who had fame among foreigners ; but his wide popularity was 
due rather to his achievements as a philosopher, as a physicist, as 
a statesman, than to his labors as an author. Irving was six years 
older than Cooper, and his reputation was as high in England as 
at home ; yet to this day he is little more than a name to those who 
do not speak our mother tongue. But after Cooper had published 
The Spy, The Last of the Mohicans, and The Pilot, his popularity 



THE NOVELISTS. 147 

was cosmopolitan ; he was almost as widely read in France, in Ger- 
many, and in Italy as in Great Britain and the United States. 
Only one American book has ever attained the international success 
of these of Cooper's — Uncle Tom's Cabin, and only one American 
author has since gained a name at all commensurate with Cooper's 
abroad — Poe. . . . With Goethe and Schiller, with Scott and 
Byron, Cooper was one of the foreign forces which brought about 
the Romanticist revolt in France, profoundly affecting the litera- 
ture of all Latin countries. Dumas owed almost as much to Cooper 
as he did to Scott ; and Balzac said that if Cooper had only drawn 
character as well as he painted the phenomena of nature, he would 
have uttered the last word of our art." — Brander Matthews. 



Catherine Maria Sedgwick (1789-1867). 

Life (by Mary E. Dewey, 1870. See Prescott's Mis- 
cellanies; Poe's Literati). 

Born the same year as Cooper and publishing her first 
novel, A Neiv England Tale, one year after the appear- 
ance of The Sketch Book and The Spy, Miss Sedgwick 
was the first American woman to achieve substantial 
success as a novelist. Susanna Rowson, with her tear- 
ful, sentimental Charlotte Temple; Tabitha Tenney, 
and others had achieved only a passing fame. When, 
in 1824, Redwood appeared, it was immediately trans- 
lated into four European languages, the French transla- 
tor even attributing the novel to Cooper. Of the novels 
written by Miss Sedgwick, all of them dealing with New 
England life, Hope Leslie, or Early Times in Massachu- 
setts (1827) and The Linwoods, or Sixty Years Since in 
America (1835) are undoubtedly the best. Aside from 
her six novels, she produced nearly twenty volumes, 
consisting of collected tales and sketches contributed to 



148 AMERICAN LITERATURE. 

magazines and annuals, biographies, letters, sketches of 
travel, juveniles, and essays critical and moralizing. 
She contributed " Le Bossu " to the Tales of the Glauber 
Spa (1832), a series edited by Robert C. Sands and con- 
tributed to by Bryant, Paulding, and William Legget. 

Although the day of the leisurely two-volume novel 
has nearly passed, Miss Sedgwick's novels are still read- 
able. Her greatest defect is the sermonizing tendency 
of her day, which filled her novels with diffuse and 
tedious pages. Her excellencies are the quiet, truthful 
pictures of her native Massachusetts home life. 

John Neal (1793-1876). 

"John NeaP s_ forces are multitudinous and fire briskly at every- 
thing. They occupy all the province of letters and are nearly useless 
from being spread over too much ground." — Whipple. 

Life (Neal's Wandering Recollections of a Lifetime, 
1869; Lowell's Fable for Critics; Poe's Marginalia, 
cxxviii.). Surely Nature never committed a greater 
blunder than in sending the impetuous, worldly John 
Neal into the quiet Quaker family at Portland, Maine. 
But the mistake was soon rectified, the young fellow 
being early read out of the society " for knocking," as 
he says, " a man head over heels, for writing a tragedy, 
for paying a military fine, and for desiring to be turned 
out whether or no." After a wandering career he at 
length settled down in Baltimore, where he formed 
a commercial partnership with the poet Pierpont, but 
the firm failing soon after, he applied himself to law. 
His first novel, Keep Cool, appeared in 1817, and from 



THE NOVELISTS. 149 

this time until his death he continued to pour out a 
flood of literary matter. In his own words his publica- 
tions "would amount to a hundred octavo volumes at 
least, on subjects far too numerous to mention." He 
was connected with many papers and magazines both in 
America and England. 

Although Poe, echoing perhaps the sentiment of his 
time, was " inclined to rank John Neal as, at all events, 
second among our men of indisputable genius," time has 
shown the falsity of this estimate. As a poet, Neal has 
here and there fine passages, but these could not save 
The Battle of- Niagara and other poetical efforts from 
oblivion. As a novelist of American life, he antedated 
Cooper several years. His best novels are Logan 
(1821), Seventy-Six, a tale of the Revolution (1822), 
Randolph (1822), Rachel Dyer, a tale of the Salem 
witches (1828), The Down-Uasters, and Ruth Elder. 
Neal wrote with extreme rapidity, none of his works 
occupying him more than a month. 

Required Reading. — The Fable for Critics. (Neal.) 

John Pendleton Kennedy (1795-1870). 

Life (by Henry T. Tuckerman ; Tribute to the Memory 
of Kennedy, by R. C. Winthrop, 1870). During the fif- 
teen years between 1838 and 1853, among others who held 
the office of Secretary of the Navy, were the American 
authors, Paulding, Bancroft, and Kennedy. The last, a 
native of Baltimore, a lawyer and a statesman with a 
long and honorable record, is known in literature chiefly 



150 AMERICAN LITERATURE. 

through his three charming novels of American life, — 
Swallow Barn, a Story of Rural Life in Virginia (1832), 
Horseshoe Robinson, a Tale of the Tory Ascendency 
(1835), and Rob of the Bowl (1838), a story describing 
the province of Maryland under the second Lord Balti- 
more. The first, a quiet, simple tale of the old days in 
Virginia, is its author's best work. The fourth chapter 
of the second volume of Thackeray's novel, The Vir- 
ginians, owes its wonderful accuracy of description to 
the fact that it was written by Kennedy. 

Robert Montgomery Bird (1803-1854), a native of Del- 
aware, was educated for the medical profession, but soon 
turned to literature. He first composed three tragedies, 
the first of which, The Gladiator, a powerful composition, 
was widely popular, even becoming a favorite with 
Edwin Forrest. Next appeared two novels, Calavar, a 
Tale of the Conquest of Mexico (1834), and The Infidel, 
or the Fall of Mexico (1835). 

" The author has studied with great care the costume, manners, 
and military usages of the natives and has done for them what 
Cooper has done for the wild .tribes of the North — touched their 
rude features with the bright colors of a poetic fancy." — Prescott. 

Bird's last literary work was a series of novels dealing 
with American frontier life, full of startling adventures 
and dramatic situations. Among these the best known 
are The Hawks of Hawk Hollow, and Nick of the Woods, 
or the Jibbenainosay, a tragic story of Kentucky frontier 
life. For a review of the former see Poe's works, Vol. 
VI., 205. These stories of adventure, which have been 
widely imitated, are without doubt the parent of the 
modern dime novel. 



THE NOVELISTS. 151 

William Gilmore Simms (1806-1870). 

Life (by William P. Trent, in American Men of Let- 
ters Series). The first novelist of the South, both as to 
time and rank, was a native of Charleston, South Caro- 
lina. As so many other American authors have done, 
he commenced life as a law student, being admitted 
to the bar at the age of twenty-two. After a year he 
turned to journalism, and very soon he began the literary 
labors which in time made him the most voluminous and 
versatile of American authors. Besides producing as 
many novels as did Cooper, he wrote the standard His- 
tory of South Carolina, and the lives of Generals Marion 
and Greene, Captain John Smith, and the Chevalier 
Bayard. He was also the author of some fourteen 
volumes of poems; he edited several of Shakespeare's 
plays, and contributed numerous articles to the peri- 
odicals. His published works number over sixty titles. 

The best of Simms' novels may be divided into three 
groups. Colonial Romance: The Yemasse (1835) 
and The Oassique of Kiawah ; Revolutionary Ro- 
mance: The Partisan, a tale of Marion's men, Melli- 
champe, The Scout, Katherine Walton, The Forayers, 
Eutaiv, and Woodcraft; and Border Romance: Guy 
Rivers, Richard Hurdis, Border Beagles, Confession, 
Beauchampe, and Charlemont. 

Although Poe, with characteristic partiality, declared 
that Simms, aside from Brockden Brown, Hawthorne, 
and Cooper, was "immeasurably the best writer of 
fiction in America," the books of this novelist are lit- 



152 AMEBIC AN LITERATURE. 

tie read at the present day. His novels lack artistic 
finish and symmetrical design. All the worst defects 
of Cooper's work are to be found in them. He wrote 
too rapidly, and though at times he succeeded in viv- 
idly and vigorously painting action and landscape, the 
defects so far outweigh the beauties that few have 
patience to read more than one of his creations. 

Herman Melville (1819-1891), a native of New York 
City, made in his eighteenth year a voyage to Liver- 
pool and later, in 1841, shipped before the mast on 
board a whaler bound for the Pacific. He cruised con- 
tinuously for eighteen months, and so harshly were the 
sailors treated that while in the harbor of Nukahiva, 
one of the Marquesas Islands, he deserted and made 
his way inland. Here he fell in with the Typees, a 
wild race of cannibals, by whom he was captured. 
Having won their confidence, however, by a fortunate 
chance, he was kindly treated and after four months 
of captivity was rescued by an Australian whaler. Af- 
ter two years more afloat Melville, in 1846, published 
Typee : a Peep at Polynesian Life during a Four Months' 
Residence in a Valley of the Marquesas. Among his 
other works are Omoo (1847), Redburn and Mardi, and 
a Voyage Thither (1848), White Jacket; or, The World 
in a Man-of-War (1850), and Moby Dick; or the Whale 
(1851). 

" Until Richard H. Dana and Herman Melville wrote, the com- 
mercial sailor of Great Britain and the United States was without 
representation in literature. . . . They were the first to lift the 
hatch and show the world what passes in a ship's forecastle; how 
men live down in that gloomy cave ; how and what they eat and 



THE NOVELISTS. 153 

where they sleep ; what pleasures they take ; what their sorrows 
and wrongs are ; how they are used when they quit their black 
sea-parlors in response to the boatswain's silver summons to work 
on deck by day or by night. . . . Melville wrote out of his heart 
and out of wide and perhaps bitter experience; he enlarged our 
knowledge of the life of the deep by adding many descriptions to 
those which Dana had already given. His 'South Seaman' is 
typical. Dana sighted her, but Melville lived in her. His books 
are now but little read. . . . Yet a famous man he was in those 
far days when every sea was bright with the American flag, when 
the cotton-white canvas shone star-like on the horizon, when the 
nasal laugh of the jolly Yankee tar in China found its echo in 
Peru. Famous he was; now he is neglected; yet his name and 
works will not die. He is a great figure in shadow; but the 
shadow is not that of oblivion." — W. Clark Russell. 



X. 

THE POETS. 

In July, 1818, there appeared in the North American 
Review an essay on American poetry from the pen of 
William Cullen Bryant, in which he singled out and 
estimated those who up to that time had produced 
worthy verse on this side of the Atlantic. The list is 
singularly suggestive. The only poets he saw fit " to in- 
terrupt in their passage to oblivion," were the Rev. John 
Adams, Joseph Green, Francis Hopkinson, Dr. Church, 
Freneau ; the Connecticut poets, Trumbull, Dwight, 
Barlow, Humphreys, and Hopkins ; the youthful poet 
William Clifton, St. John Honey wood, and Robert Treat 
Paine. Of these poets, who were the bright particular 
representatives of American poetry almost at the end of 
the first quarter of the Nineteenth Century, scarcely 
one is to-day more than a mere name. 

One style may be said to characterize the work of all 
these poets. Bryant, in the essay mentioned, denounced 
the style of poetry then prevalent, "as in too many 
instances tinged with a sickly and affected imitation 
of the peculiar manner of the late popular poets of 
England." Pope, with his heroic couplets, dominated 
American verse long after the revolt of the English 
natural school had thrown off its chain. 

The first strong, original note in American poetry 

154 



THE POETS. 155 

came from Bryant. Although nurtured on the rhymes 
of Pope and Thomson, and writing his juvenile pro- 
ductions in heroic couplets, he was, never- 1777.1844. 
theless, the first influence that helped to ^ 1 1 < } nias Camp ~ 
free our sons' from the " ten-linked chain." 1788-1824. 

Lord Byron. 

The publication of " Thanatopsis " in 1817, 1779-1852. 
and of The Ages and Other Poems in 1821, 1799^22 °° re ' 
marks an epoch in the historv of our p - B - Shelley. 

r J 1796-1821. 

poetry. John Keats. 

While American verse was thus making jj^^ Hunt. 
its first feeble beginnings, the firmament 1798—1845. 

& ° ' Thomas Hood. 

of English poetry was still glowing with mo-1850. 

' "Willi el in A^ords- 

the brilliant lights that had given glory to worth. 

the second great creative period of English s^T^Coferidge. 

literature. In 1821, the birth year of 1774-1843. 

J Robert Southey. 

American literature in all its departments, 
since it witnessed the production of The Sketch Book, 
The Spy, and Bryant's first volume of poems, Keats had 
just finished his short but brilliant career, Shelley was 
to follow him a year later and Byron soon after, while 
Wordsworth and Coleridge and Southey and scores 
of lesser lights were at the zenith, with Tennyson on 
the eastern horizon. 



William Cullen Bryant (1794-1878). 

" Bryant's writings transport us into the depths of the solemn, prime- 
val forest ; to the shores of the lonely lake ; to the banks of the wild, 
nameless stream ; or the brow of the rocky upland rising like a prom- 
ontory from amidst a wide ocean of foliage ; while they shed around 
us the glories of a climate fierce in its extremes, but splendid in all its 
vicissitudes." — Washington Irving. 



156 AMERICAN LITERATURE. 

Life (Parke Godwin's William Oullen Bryant, 1883, 
is the standard life of the poet ; other Lives have been 

"Thanato sis " wr ^ tten ^J ^ onn Bigelow, in The American 
"The Ages." Men of Letters Series, 1890; by David J. 
<<To a water- Hill? [q The American Authors Series, 

"Death of the 1879 ; and by A. J. Symington. See also 

Flowers." . . . 

" The Flood of George William Curtis' Homes of Ameri- 
" The Voice of can Authors, 1853: James Grant Wilson's 
Autumn. Bryant and his Friends ; R. H. Stoddard's 

Translation of 

the Iliad and the Homes and Haunts of our Elder Poets; 

Odyssey. 

and Bryant's " Boys of my Boyhood," St. 
Nicholas for December, 1876). 

Although the best part of Bryant's life-work was 
connected with New York, he belongs nevertheless to 
New England. Born in Cummington, Massachusetts, 
of the old Mayflower stock, he passed his boyhood and 
early manhood amid the Berkshire Hills, and his poems 
are as true to the New England landscape and spirit 
as are those of Whittier. 

Bryant's father was a physician of good education and 
scholarly habits. His home was isolated, and his chil- 
dren had but few social privileges, but to compensate in 
a measure for this, he had gathered a large library for the 
times, one in which the English poets seem to have been 
largely represented, and in this his family revelled dur- 
ing the long winter evenings. In the brief autobio- 
graphical fragment given in Godwin's Life of Bryant, 
the poet tells remarkable stories of the precocity of 
his family, but these can easily be believed when we 
remember the poet's own early achievements. He pro- 



THE POETS. 157 

duced excellent verses in his early boyhood ; at the age 

of thirteen we find him writing a satire on Jefferson's 

administration, so excellent that the public could not 

believe it the work of a mere boy ; and at the age of 

seventeen he wrote " Thanatopsis," which is, perhaps, 

"the highwater mark of American poetry." 

In 1810 Bryant entered the class of 1813 in Williams 

College. 

"I remained there two terms only, but I pursued my studies 
with the intent to become a student at Yale, for which I prepared 
myself, intending to enter the Junior Class there. My father, 
however, was not able, as he told me, to bear the expense. I had 
received an honorable dismission from Williams College, and was 
much disappointed at being obliged to end my college course in 
that way." — From a letter to H. W. Powers, 1878. 

Bryant next turned his attention to the law and in 
1815 was admitted to the bar. The next nine years 
were quietly passed in the practice of his profession in 
the villages of Plainfield and Great Barrington, Massa- 
chusetts. But the poet was sadly out of place. In his 
poem, " Green River," published at this time, he com- 
plained of being 

" forced to drudge for the dregs of men, 
And scrawl strange words with the barbarous pen, 
And mingle among the jostling crowd 
Where the sons of strife are subtle and loud." 

It was a positive relief when, in 1825, through the 
influence of friends which his little volume of poems, 
published in 1821, had won for him, he went to New 
York City and devoted himself to literary work. Dur- 
ing the following year he was made one of the editors 



158 AMERICAN LITERATURE. 

of the New York Evening Post, becoming soon after 
editor-in-chief of the paper, a position that he held for 
the rest of his life — a period of over half a century. 

Bryant's life, like that of most men of letters, was 
bare of incident. The only variations from the monoto- 
nous life of the city editor were his six visits to Europe. 
During the last years of his life he was in almost con- 
stant demand as an orator on great occasions. Bryant 
died in New York City, June 12, 1878. On May 29 
he had delivered an address in Central Park at the 
unveiling of the Mazzini statue. It was an exceedingly 
warm day and the sun shone fiercely down on the un- 
protected head of the poet. Later in the day, overcome 
with dizziness, he fell, striking his head on a stone curb- 
ing, from the effects of which blow he never rallied. 

Thanatopsis (1811). — 

"'Thanatopsis' alone would establish a claim to genius." — 
Christopher North. 

Written " shortly after he was withdrawn from college, while 
residing with his parents at Cummington in the summer of 1811, 
and before he had attained his eighteenth year." — Godwin. 

Published in North American Review, September, 1817. 

" There was no mistaking the quality of these verses. The 
stamp of genius was upon every line. No such verses had been 
made in America before. They soon found their way into the 
school books of the country. They were quoted from the pulpit 
and upon the hustings. Their gifted author had a national fame 
before he had a vote, and in due time ' Thanatopsis ' took the place 
which it still retains among the masterpieces of English didactic 
poetry." — Godwin 's Life of Bryant. 

Required Reading. — " Thanatopsis." The best study of Bry- 
ant's poetry for classroom use is Alden's Studies in Bryant. 



THE POETS. 159 

To a Waterfowl (1819).— 

" When be journeyed on foot over the hills to Plainfield on the 
15th of December, 1816, to see what inducements it offered him to 
commence there the practice of the profession to which he had 
just been licensed, he says in one of his letters that he felt ' very 
forlorn and desolate.' The world seemed to grow bigger and 
darker as he ascended, and his future more uncertain and desper- 
ate. The sun had already set, leaving behind it one of those 
brilliant seas of chrysolite and opal which often flood the New 
England skies, and, while pausing to contemplate the rosy splendor 
with rapt admiration, a solitary bird made its winged way along 
the illuminated horizon. He watched the lone wanderer until it 
was lost in the distance. He then went on with new strength and 
courage. When he reached the house where he was to stop for the 
night, he immediately sat down and wrote the lines, " To a Water- 
fowl," the concluding verse of which will perpetuate to future ages 
the lesson in faith which the scene had impressed upon him. 

" ' He who, from zone to zone, 
Guides through the boundless sky thy certain flight, 
In the long way that I must tread alone, 
Will lead my steps aright.' " 

— John Bigelow's Life of Bryant. 
Required Reading. — " To a Waterfowl." 

The Ages (1821). — The matchless poems just men- 
tioned at once placed Bryant in the very front rank of 
American poets, a position that he has held until the 
present day. In 1821 he was invited to deliver the 
annual poem at Harvard, and he responded with 
the magnificent production, "The Ages," which, at the 
earnest request of his friends, he published, together 
with seven others, among which were " Thanatopsis," 
"To a Waterfowl," "Inscription for the Entrance of 
a Wood," " The Yellow Violet," and " Green River." 



160 AMERICAN LITERATURE. 

Poems of Nature. — Like Wordsworth, Bryant loved 
nature intensely, and the greater number of his poems 
were inspired by this love. He caught the poetry of 
the Indian Summer as Irving did its romance. He is 
the poet of the New England autumn. No one has 
so well pictured its brilliant foliage, its fading flowers, 
its dreamy, melancholy days. " Autumn Woods," " No- 
vember," "The Death of the Flowers," "The Voice of 
Autumn," and " October " are poems that have become 
a part of our English language. He is also the poet of 
the New England wild flowers. The yellow violet, the 
fringed gentian, and the painted cup are as inseparably 
connected with his name as the rhodora is with Emer- 
son's, the wild honeysuckle with Freneau's, the dande- 
lion with Lowell's, the goldenrod with Whittier's, and 
the flower-de-luce with Longfellow's. He is the poet of 
all others that has sung best of the boundless forest and 
the prairies. 

For Class Reading. — The five autumn poems mentioned 
above, also " The Yellow Violet," '« The Fringed Gentian," " The 
Painted Cup," " The Prairies," " The Forest Hymn." 

His Uniform Excellence. — No poet has written so few 
inferior productions as Bryant. Hardly a line of all 
that he produced could be spared. Conscientious and 
painstaking, he was his own severest critic. His works 
can be judged by the severest standards and not fall 
short. He did not succeed by accident; he succeeded 
by fine poetic genius and patient hard work. He wrote 
no long poem. To pick here and there from his poems 
as a sample of his powers is taking an unfair advantage. 



THE POETS. 161 

To understand the poetic work of Bryant one must read 
all that he has written. 

The Translation of Homer (1871-1872).— 

"One of the finest specimens of pure Saxon English in our lan- 
guage. " — Bigelow. 

The translation of Homer's Iliad and Odyssey occupied 
the last years of Bryant's life. It has been observed that 
" Thanatopsis " is the most remarkable work ever done by 
a youth of eighteen ; in like manner it may be said that 
the translation of Homer is the most remarkable work 
ever done by a man of eighty. It immediately became 
the standard English translation of the great epic poet. 
The old Greek had never been brought so near to read- 
ers of English. 

Required Reading. — " Ulysses among the Phseacians." Odys- 
sey, Book V. 

Bryant's Style. — (Stedman, iii ; Richardson, II., 
35-49 ; Whipple's Literature and Life ; John Wilson's 
Essays : Critical and Imaginative ; Bayard Taylor's 
Critical Essays and Literary Notes ; Deshler's - After- 
noons with the Poets [Bryant's Sonnets] ; George 
William Curtis' Address before the New York His- 
torical Society ; Lowell's Fable for Critics,) 

Bryant's poems are cold and stately. There is in 
them none of the passion and fire that characterize 
much of the work of Whittier and Longfellow and 
Poe. Everything in his verse is classically moulded, 
like a Greek frieze carved from cold marble, yet fault- 
less in its art. He was a perfect master of English, and 



162 AMERICAN LITERATURE. 

no American has better understood the technique of his 
art. His blank verse has never been surpassed; stately 
and melodious, it reminds one of Milton. 

His Character. — " There is probably no eminent man in the 
country upon whose life and genius and career the verdict of his 
fellow-citizens would be more immediate and unanimous. His 
character and life had a simplicity and austerity of outline that 
had become universally familiar, like a neighboring mountain or 
the sea. His convictions were very strong, and his temper uncom- 
promising ; he was independent beyond most Americans. He was 
an editor and a partisan ; but he held politics and all other things 
subordinate to the truth and the common welfare, and his earnest- 
ness and sincerity and freedom from selfish ends took the sting of 
personality from his opposition, and constantly placated all who, 
like him, sought lofty and virtuous objects. . . . This same bent 
of nature showed itself in the character of his verse. His poetry 
is intensely and distinctively American. He was a man of schol- 
arly accomplishment, familiar with other languages and literature. 
But there is no tone or taste of anything not peculiarly American 
in his poetry. It is as characteristic as the wine of the Catawba 
grape, and could have been written only in America by an Ameri- 
can naturally sensitive to whatever is most distinctively American." 
— George William, Curtis. 

Required Reading. — Poems on Bryant's Seventieth Birth- 
day by Holmes, Whittier, and Lowell. 

" The Dawn of Imagination." — The imaginative ele- 
ment was slow to enter American literature. The Puri- 
tan mind dealt with facts, not fancies. Wild vagaries like 
the Faerie Queene and The Midsummer Night's Dream 
held no beauties for him that could enjoy The Bay of 
Doom. The ponderous Revolutionary poets kept their 
feet firmly on the solid earth, while Bryant, dignified 
and majestic, never attempted the light paces of fancy. 



THE POETS. 163 

The "dawn of imagination," as Professor Richardson 
terms it, came with Drake and Halleck. 



Joseph Rodman Drake (1795-1820). 

"Drake was a born singer, — almost an improvisatore, — whose 
imaginative faculty, although of rather flimsy texture, was always 
rapid, joyous, and infectious." — Bayard Taylor. 

Life. — (No life of Drake and no complete collection of 
his poems have yet been published. See Wilson's Life of 
Halleck, and Bryant and his Friends ; also Richardson, 
II., 24-27.) The lives of Joseph Rodman Drake and the 
English poet Keats seem to have had much in common. 
Born the same year, they died within a few months of 
each other of the same disease. Forced The Croaker 
from childhood to struggle with poverty, ^Th e r American 
each received no systematic education, -and Fla s-" 

, ,. . The Culprit 

each at length chose the medical profession Fay. 
as a means for winning daily bread. When consump- 
tive tendencies became marked, Drake sought in vain 
for relief in New Orleans, while Keats went to the south 
of Europe. Both died at the early age of twenty-five, 
when life had hardly begun. Farther than this the 
comparison may not safely be made, for although 
Drake produced a few lyrics of exquisite beauty that 
are not forgotten, Keats has left work that will stand 
while the language endures. 

One of the most important circumstances in the lives 
of Drake and Fitz-Greene Halleck, and indeed one of 
the most charming episodes in the history of American 



164 AMERICAN LITERATURE. 

literature, was the life-long friendship of the two poets, 
which began some months after Halleck's removal to 
New York in 1811. The chief literary result of this 
friendship was The Croaker Papers, a series of light, 
satirical poems, " contributed," in the words of Halleck, 
" anonymously to the columns of the New York Evening 
Post from March to June, 1819, and occasionally after- 
wards." After the death of Drake these Papers were 
published in an elegant edition, but they are now more 
easily to be found in the 1868 edition of Halleck's 
poems. 

" Whoever among the present generation wishes to learn some- 
thing of the leading men of the city and state and of the social, 
scientific, and political events of so interesting a decade as that of 
1819-1829 in New York history, cannot but be enlightened, as well 
as greatly amused, by a perusal of these sprightly poems." — /. G. 
Wilson. 

But Drake's claim to remembrance rests almost 
wholly upon The Culprit Fay, written, according to 
the best authority, in 1816, when the poet was in his 
twenty-third year. This fanciful rhyme of fairyland, 
laid amid the Highlands of the Hudson, tells with mi- 
nuteness the story of a fay, who, for loving " an earthly 
maid," was condemned by the fairy court to purge his 
wings with a drop caught when 

, " The sturgeon leaps in the bright moonshine ; " 
and to follow with speed the first shooting star, for 

" The last faint spark of its burning train 
Shall light the elfin lamp again." 



THE POETS. 165 

The melody of this dainty creation is haunting in its 
sweetness ; its movement is rapid and spontaneous, its 
descriptions of fairy equipment exquisitely drawn. Poe 
called it fanciful rather than imaginative ; some have 
complained that it is extravagant in color and figure, 
yet it remains, notwithstanding, one of the most charm- 
ing of fairy tales, a veritable midsummer night's dream. 

Required Reading. — The Culprit Fay. 

Fitz-Greene Halleck (1790-1867). 

" A natural lyrist, whose pathos and eloquence were inborn, and 
whose sentiment, though he wrote in the prevailing English mode, 
was that of his own land." — Stedman. 

Life (by James Grant Wilson, 1869. See also the 
elegant Memorial of Fitz-G-reene Halleck containing the 
addresses and poems delivered at the dedi- <<M B 
cation of the Halleck Monument in Guil- zari s." 
ford, Connecticut, and at the unveiling of << Red Jacket." 
the Central Park statue, 1877, with nu- " A1 ™, ck 

Oastle. 

merous engravings. See also Wilson's "Fanny." 
Bryant and his Friends, 1886 ; Poe's Lit- o/joMphR?^ 
erati and Lowell's Fable for Critics.') man Drake '" 

As late as 1846, Poe, in his Literati of New York, 
declared that 

" Our principal poets are perhaps most frequently named in this 
order : Bryant, Halleck, Dana, Sprague, Longfellow, Willis, and so 
on — Halleck coming second in the series, but holding, in fact, a 
rank in the public opinion quite equal to that of Bryant." 

But it was the fame of his early work that kept Hal- 
leck's name thus prominent. Drake, with his vivacity 



166 AMERICAN LITERATURE. 

and his fine fancy, seems to have been his inspiration. 
The edition of his poems published in 1827, seven years 
after the death of his young friend, contains nearly 
everything of value that Halleck has given to the world. 
In it was " Marco Bozzaris," his finest lyric, an heroic 
ode that has the ring of Campbell at his best, and it 
also contained the fine poems " Burns " and " Alnwick 
Castle " and the immortal tribute to his early friend 
Drake, commencing 

" Green be the turf above thee, 
Friend of my better days ! 
None knew thee but to love thee, 
Nor named thee but to praise." 

In 1849, at the death of John Jacob Astor, in whose 
counting-room he had been employed for sixteen years, 
Halleck returned to his native Guilford, Connecticut, 
whence he had wandered a half century before, to settle 
down, as he expressed it, 

" Passing rich with forty pounds a year," 

from the estate of his late employer. Here he died in 
1867, nearly fifty years after the youthful poet whose 
name stands linked with his. 

" Halleck's importance is at once perceived, if we project him 
against the background of his time. His position is almost that 
of the German poet, Gellert, — the first to sing a natural note, in 
a waste of dulness and imitation, and growing silent as he lived 
to be the contemporary of far greater men. Each of his lyrics 
came forth like a burst of light, because the poetic atmosphere 
was one of level gloom. He was the American twin brother of 
Campbell, to whom, as a poet, he always felt nearest, yet whom he 
never imitated. The ten years, from 1817 to 1827, begin and 



THE POETS. 167 

complete his season of productiveness. Nothing that he wrote 
before or after that period possesses any vitality ; and it is proba- 
ble, in fact, that he will only be known to later generations by 
six poems, which I venture to name in the order of their excel- 
lence : ' Marco Bozzaris,' ' Burns/ ' Red Jacket,' ' Alnwick Castle/ 
' The Field of the Grounded Arms/ and ' On the Death of Drake.' 
His < Fanny' may still be read with interest, but its original 
charm faded away with the surprise of its appearance." — Bayard 
Taylor. 

Required Reading. — "Marco Bozzaris," " On the Death 
of Drake," and "Burns." Also Whittier's poem " Fitz-Greene 
Halleck." 

MINOR POETS. 

Washington Allston (1779-1843), whom Underwood 
designates as "perhaps the greatest painter of our 
English race," was one of the most cultured men of 
early New England ; a writer of force and imagination, 
and a conversationalist of the very first order. He was 
born in South Carolina, but removing in early boyhood 
to New England, he was graduated at Harvard in 1800, 
and shortly afterwards entered the Royal Academy in 
England. He spent much of his life abroad, especially 
in Rome, where Irving found him in 1804, and became 
so charmed with the man and his life that he for a time 
seriously contemplated the study of painting as a life- 
work. Allston's chief poetical work, the Sylphs of the 
Seasons, appeared in London in 1813. But, while his 
poems have many beauties, it is chiefly as an influence 
that he is remembered in literature. Compared with 
many of his contemporaries, his production was small 
indeed, yet it should not be forgotten that, in intro- 
ducing America to the culture of Europe, Allston did a 



168 AMERICAN LITERATURE. 

service to our literature second only to that rendered 
by Longfellow. 

John Pierpont (1785-1866), a native of Connecticut 
and a graduate of Yale, after a short career as a lawyer 
and a merchant, was ordained in 1819 as pastor of the 
Hollis Street Church, Boston, where he served for more 
than a quarter of a century. His Airs of Palestine, 
1816, gave him a wide popularity. He wrote very volu- 
minously both in prose and verse, his poems being 
chiefly hymns and odes written for various occasions, 
but his fame, like the refrain of his best-known poem, 
is "passing away." (See Wilson's Bryant and Ms 
Friends.') 

Richard Henry Dana (1787-1879), like Bryant, lived 
to see almost the whole history of American literature, 
from its first feeble beginnings until the present time. 

With few other authors has time so reversed her 
first judgments. For almost half a century Dana was 
counted with the three or four greatest American poets, 
while to-day he is remembered chiefly by his long poem, 
The Buccaneers. But though, like Allston's, his actual 
production was small, his influence for good on our lit- 
erature, in its most critical period, cannot be overesti- 
mated. Aside from his poems, he contributed to the 
North American Review a series of papers on the 
English poets, that won for him a place that he still 
holds among the best American literary critics. He 
delivered lectures on Shakespeare, published several 
thin volumes of poetry and two psychological novels, 
and in 1821, assisted by Bryant and Allston, established 



THE POETS. 169 

in Boston The Idle Man, a periodical somewhat after 

the style of Johnson's Rambler and Idler. 

Dana was a native of Cambridge, Massachusetts, 

where the most of his life was passed, and where he 

died at the great age of ninety-two. His son, R. H. 

Dana, Jr. (1815-1882), was the author of Two Years 

Before the Mast (1837), by many considered the best 

sea narrative in the language. See page 152. 

See Bryant and his Friends; Whipple's Essays and Reviews, 
Vol. II., also Adams' Life of R. H. Dana, Jr. 

Lydia Huntley Sigourney (1791-1865), a native of 
Norwich, Connecticut, was the author of no less than 
forty-six distinct works in prose and verse. Her sympa- 
thies and her sincere religious convictions shine sweetly 
from all her writings. As a poet, she was exceedingly 
popular, especially with religious readers. " Niagara," 
" The Death of an Infant," and " Winter " are among 
her best poems. See Whittier's Poem to Lydia H. 
Sigourney. 

Charles Sprague (1791-1875) is another example of 
the emptiness of contemporary fame. During the first 
half of the century he ranked second only to Bryant 
and Halleck, but to-day he is little more than a vague 
memory. Sprague was a banker in Boston, and during 
the whole of his long life never went ten miles from 
his native city. His Ode to Shakespeare, a carefully 
elaborated production, which really possesses literary 
merit of a high order, was hailed by contemporary 
critics as the equal of Gray's Progress of Poesy, and the 
superior even of Dryden's " Alexander's Feast." As an 



170 AMERICAN LITERATURE. 

orator, Sprague won many laurels. His Fourth of July 
oration, of 1825, has been declaimed by thousands of 
schoolboys. 

Maria Gowen Brooks (1795-1845), hailed by Southey 
as " Maria del Occidente," was a native of Medford, 
Massachusetts. In 1880 she visited England, where 
she lived for a time in the home of the poet Southey, 
who declared her "the most impassioned and most 
imaginative of all the poetesses." Her chief work, 
Zophiel ; or the Bride of Seven, London, 1833, a poem 
evidently inspired by the Book of Tobit in the Apocry- 
pha, shows great artistic skill and power, but lacks 
simplicity and human tenderness. It is purely an intel- 
lectual production. Id omen ; or the Vale of Yumuri, 
an autobiographic poem, appeared shortly before the 
author's death. 

James Gates Percival (1795-1857), a native of Con- 
necticut, an eminent scholar and linguist, was at one 
time considered the most promising American poet, but 
his verses were hastily written and never revised, and 
his carelessness has consigned him, along with others 
far less gifted, to oblivion. His best known poems are 
" The Coral Grove," " Seneca Lake," and " Mary." 

See Lowell's My Study Windows. 

John G. C. Brainerd (1796-1828), born in New Lon- 
don, Connecticut, and a member of the class of 1815 
at Yale, died of consumption at the early age of thirty- 
two. His poems, little lyrics charmingly constructed, 
possess, in many instances, merits of a high order. His 
"Fall of Niagara," containing only nineteen lines, was 



THE POETS. 171 

declared by Jared Sparks to be the most forcible and 
the most graphically correct poem ever written on the 
great cataract. A complete edition of Brainerd's poems, 
with an appreciative memoir by Whittier, appeared four 
years after the poet's death. Ah elegant edition, with 
a memoir by the Rev. Royal Robbins, was published 
in Hartford in 1842. 

George P. Morris (1802-1864), a native of Philadel- 
phia, whom Tuckerman mentions as pre-eminently " the 
song-writer of America," was during nearly all of his 
life connected with journalism in New York City. His 
lyrics like "My Mother's Bible," "Woodman, Spare 
that Tree," and scores of others, which deal with the 
common experiences "of home life, are " heart-songs " 
that can never grow old. No poet of his generation 
was more loved both in Europe and America. 

See Literary Criticisms, by Horace Binney Wallace. 

Single Poem Poets. — This period of American litera- 
ture produced a large number of single lyrics which 
have become famous apart from the names of their 
authors. Among these may be mentioned " The Star- 
spangled Banner," by Francis Scott Key (1779-1843); 
"The Old Oaken Bucket," by Samuel Woodworth 
(1785-1842); and "My Life is like a Summer Rose,' 9 
by Richard Henry Wilde (1789-1847). Although 
John Howard Payne (1792-1852) wrote upwards of 
sixty dramas, hi is now remembered solely on account 
of his little lyric " Home, Sweet Home," originally a 
part of his play The Maid of Milan. 



XI. 
EDGAR ALLAN POE. 

1809-1849. 

"Alone among our poets Poe links us to European literature by 
his musical despair." — Greenough White. 

Edgar Allan Poe stands solitary among the Ameri- 
can men of letters. Although, by a strange chance, 
born in Boston, he had nothing in common with the 
New England group of authors, and although he passed 
an important part of his life in New York City, he 
was in no way a member of the Knickerbocker School. 
Whether viewed as poet, romancer, or critic, he stands 
by himself ; he refuses to be classified ; he seems out of 
place in American literature, like an importation from 
the Old World, — a Pushkin, or Heine, or De Musset; 
like a brilliant exotic among the native wild flowers. 

Life. — (Poe's writings were first collected in 1850 
by Rufus W. Griswold in a four volume edition pref- 
aced by a memoir. This sketch, written in a hostile 
spirit, was answered in 1859 in Sarah H. Whitman's 
Edgar A. Poe and his Critics, and later by John Ingram 
and by W. F. Gill. Prefixed to various editions of 
Poe's works have been notices of his life and genius 
by such writers as Willis, Lowell, Stoddard, Charles F. 
Briggs, James Hanny, Edmund Blanchard, and others. 

172 



EDGAR ALLAN POE. 173 

Poe's life has also been written by Eugene Didier and 
by George E. Woodberry. The latter work, which is 
one of the American Men of Letters Series, and which 
is the most accurate and impartial life of the poet that 
has yet appeared, is the only one that can be recom- 
mended without reserve for school use. The best edi- 
tion of Poe's works is that published in six volumes 
in 1844, edited by R. H. Stoddard. This edition con- 
tains many fac-simile manuscripts, an excellent Life by 
the editor, and the essay contributed by Lowell at Poe's 
request to Graham's Magazine in 1845. A complete 
and final edition of Poe's works in twelve volumes, 
edited by G. E. Woodberry and E. C. Stedman, is at 
present [1895] publishing.) 

In the biography of no eminent American is it so dif- 
ficult to arrive at the unvarnished truth as in that of 
Poe. His own statements cannot be trusted for a mo- 
ment. He gave, at various times, at least three widely 
different dates for his birth ; he seemed to be proud of 
the reckless exploits of his youth, and magnified them 
when possible ; and he sanctioned the wildest fables, 
like the story of his journey to St. Petersburg in 1827. 
His biographers have taken every standpoint, from that 
of Griswold, a bitter enemy, to that of Ingram, who 
goes to the opposite extreme of laudation. 

Poe was born in Boston, Jan. 19, 1809. His father, 
David Poe, the son of a distinguished Revolutionary 
officer of Baltimore, had abandoned the law to become 
an indifferent actor, and in 1805 had married Mrs. Eliza- 
beth Arnold Hopkins, a pretty, young actress of con- 



174 AMERICAN LITERATURE. 

siderable ability. During the three years ending in 
September, 1809, they had found steady employment 
in Boston, but in 1811 both died of quick consumption, 
leaving three destitute children, the eldest only five 
years of age. Their pitiful condition attracted the at- 
tention of the people of Richmond, where the mother 
had died, and Edgar, the second of the family, a bright, 
beautiful boy, was taken into the home of Mr. John 
Allan, a wealthy tobacco merchant. The child was 
given every advantage. When six years of age he was 
taken by his foster parents to England, where for five 
years he attended a private school near London. Re- 
turning to Richmond in 1820, he was provided with 
private tutors, and was ready in 1826 to enter the 
University of Virginia. By December of the same year 
he had contracted so many debts that Mr. Allan refused 
to furnish more money, and Poe was accordingly given 
a chance in the counting-room at Richmond. Becom- 
ing disgusted with this work, he soon left the city, and, 
pressing on to Boston, published, in 1827, a thin volume 
of poems under the title Tamerlane and Other Poems. 
By a Bostonian. In May of the same year he enlisted 
in the regular army, where he served for two years, 
rising to the rank of sergeant-major. In 1829, learn- 
ing of the death of Mrs. Allan, Poe went home on a 
furlough, was forgiven by his foster father, and through 
his influence was appointed a cadet at West Point. In 
ten months he was cashiered for misconduct, and was 
immediately disowned by Mr. Allan, who, dying soon 
afterwards, made no mention of him in his will. 



EDGAR ALLAN POE. 175 

The next period in Poe's career was passed in Balti- 
more, which, as it was then the literary capital of the 
South, had attracted the ambitious young poet. But 
his literary efforts were wholly without success until 
1833, when he succeeded in winning the one hundred 
dollar prize offered by the newly established Saturday 
Visitor for the best short story. John P. Kennedy, who 
was one of the judges, afterwards declared that Poe's 
manuscript, which was as clean and legible as print, was 
decided upon almost at sight. Poe had submitted six 
tales, neatly bound, entitled Tales of the Folio Club, 
from which was selected for publication " The Manu- 
script Found in a Bottle." During the next two years 
Poe made his home with his aunt, Mrs. Clemm, and in 
1835, through the efforts of Kennedy, secured a place 
on The Southern Literary Messenger, of which he soon 
became sole editor. In 1836 he was married to his 
cousin, Virginia Clemm, a frail, beautiful girl of four- 
teen, whose love was the brightest sunbeam that ever 
entered his sad life. Every prospect of happiness and 
success seemed before him ; The Messenger became widely 
known, carrying everywhere his fame as a critic and 
story writer, but in eighteen months he was again a 
wanderer. 

During the next five years Poe was employed in 
Philadelphia, first on the editorial staff of The Q-entle- 
man's Magazine and afterwards on that of Graham's 
Monthly. In 1842, he removed to New York, where the 
rest of his life was passed. He found employment for 
a time under N. P. Willis on The Evening Mirror and 



176 AMEBIC AN LITERATURE. 

he afterwards became connected with The Broadway 
Journal, but his unfortunate habits rendered it impos- 
sible for him long to retain a position. " The Raven," 
which appeared in 1844, immediately gave him an un- 
precedented popularity, but his wife was wasting away 
with consumption amid all the accompaniments of abject 
poverty. In spite of his increasing fame and his steady 
hard work, he was obliged to receive pecuniary aid. 
After his wife's death in 1847, Poe seemed half insane 
and wholly reckless. Two years later he proposed mar- 
riage to a Mrs. Shelton, of Richmond, a friend of his 
boyhood, and, being accepted, immediately started south 
to make arrangements for the wedding, but falling in 
with old companions in Baltimore, he became crazed 
with drink, and was found unconscious several days 
later. He lingered until October 7, when he died in 
the forty-first year of his age. Such, in brief, is the sad 
and tragic story of Edgar Allan Poe. 

1. As a Critic. — It should be remembered that Poe 
first became known to the reading public not as a poet 
nor as a story writer, but as a critic, and that it was in 
this role that he was best known throughout the greater 
part of his life. In 1835, by a single skilful review of 
a crude but popular novel, he placed The Southern 
Literary Messenger beside the best American magazines. 
Throughout his life it was in the service of criticism 
that his pen was oftenest used. 

That Poe was an unfair and one-sided critic cannot be 
disputed ; that his personal likes and dislikes had great 
influence upon his estimates, is all too true, yet in spite 



EDGAR ALLAN POE. Ill 

of all this his work in this department cannot be over- 
looked. In his work on The Southern Literary Messen- 
ger he certainly inaugurated u the new age in American 
criticism." All his honest criticisms have been proved 
by time to be strikingly correct. It was Poe who 
hailed Hawthorne as a novelist of the first rank when 
that shy genius was "the obscurest man of letters in 
America." Poe was quick to see the true worth of 
Longfellow and of many another American poet at a 
time when they were all but unknown. 

Of Poe's methods as a critic Mr. Woodberry says : 

"The whole mass of his criticism — but a small portion of 
which deals with imaginative work — is particularly characterized 
by a minuteness of treatment which springs from a keen, artistic 
sensibility, and by that constant regard to the originality of the 
writer which is so frequently an element in the jealousy of genius. 
One wearies in reading it now ; but one gains thereby the better 
impression of Poe's patience and of the alertness and compass of 
his mental curiosity." — Life of Poe. 

Poe failed of winning a high place as a critic, first, 
because of his inordinate vanity. He wished to be re- 
garded as a profound scholar and accordingly disfigured 
his work with abundant allusions to occult and curi- 
ous lore of which he really knew very little. He 
delighted to show the resources of his analytical 
mind by investigating minute and unimportant points. 
Secondly, he had a hobby, — the charge of plagiarism, 
— from which he never dismounted, and thirdly, he was 
not honest. His Literati of New York, while it contains 
very much valuable criticism, is justly to be regarded 
with suspicion from its senseless denunciation of its 



178 AMERICAN LITERATURE. 

author's enemies and its sickening laudation of his 
worthless friends. 

Stoddard's judgment of Poe's criticism is summed up 
in one sentence : 

" Apart from the mechanism of authorship, which he called ' the 
philosophy of composition/ his verdicts were of no value." 

Required Reading. — " The Poetic Principle." 

2. As a Poet— (Stedman, 239; Richardson, II., 97-116.) 
Poe's fame as a poet rests on less than a dozen short 
"The Raven" poems. Few writers of any land have 
"The Bells." reached anything even approximating his 
"The City in literary position with so thin a repertory, 
the Sea." t had Poe wr i tten on i y u The Raven " 

"The Valley of J . J 

Unrest." his literary fame would still be secure. 

Palace." All that he wrote was distinctly his own, 

Parage " R original in its melody and form, and per- 
"Uiaiume." meated through and through with his 
"The Con- peculiar personality. His sense of beauty 

queror Worm." was marvellously fine. Though his poems 
are all sombre in hue, — mere cries of despair, — there 
is a haunting beauty in their melody which makes them 
cling in the memory, even against the will. There is 
something almost magical in the melody of such lines as 

" For the moon never beams without bringing me dreams 
Of the beautiful Annabel Lee ; 
And the stars never rise, but I feel the bright eyes 
Of the beautiful Annabel Lee." 

Poe has expressed his theory of poetical beauty in its 
highest manifestations by saying : 



EDGAR ALLAN POE. .179 

"All experience has shown that this tone is one of sadness. 
Beauty of whatever kind in its supreme development, invariably 
excites the sensitive soul to tears. Melancholy is thus the most 
legitimate of all the poetical tones. . . . Death is the most 
melancholy topic according to the universal understanding of 
mankind . . . and most melancholy when it most closely allies 
itself to beauty." — The Philosophy of Composition. 

In accordance with this principle nearly all of Poe's 
poetical work was done. With few exceptions his theme 
is the same. With him poetry was a sacred thing, " not 
a purpose but a passion," and he gave to it only his best. 

Required Reading. — The ten poems at the margin. 

3. As a Romancer. — (Woodberry, 117; Stedman, 252; 
Richardson, II., 116-136.) It was, perhaps, in the 
domain of the short prose romance that Poe was at 
his best, for here his imagination had free play. His 
tales, all of which are short, and which when combined 
scarcely make a volume of the size of Hawthorne's 
Twice-told Tales, may be divided into two classes: 
imaginative tales and analytical tales. Of the former 
only two, " Ligeia" and " The Fall of the House of 
Usher," need be mentioned. These mark the flood 
tide of Poe's creative achievement. 

" In ( Al Araaf ' he had framed out of the breath of the night 
wind and the idea of the harmony of universal nature a fairy 
creature, — 

' Ligeia, Ligeia, my beautiful one ! ' 

Now, by a finer touch, he incarnated the motions of the breeze, 
and the musical voices of nature, in the form of a woman : but the 
Lady Ligeia has still no human quality; her aspirations, her 
thoughts and capabilities, are those of a spirit ; the very beam and 



180 AMERICAN LITERATURE. 

glitter and silence of her ineffable eyes belong to the visionary 
world. She is, in fact, the maiden of Poe's dream, the Eidolon he 
served, the air-woven divinity in which he believed; for he had 
the true myth-making faculty, the power to make his senses aver 
what his imagination perceived. . In revealing through 'Ligeia' 
the awful might of the soul in the victory of its will over death, 
and in the eternity of its love, Poe worked in the very element of 
his reverie, in the liberty of a world as he would have it. Upon this 
story he lavished all his poetic, inventive, and literary skill, and at 
last perfected an exquisitely conceived work, and made it, within 
its own laws, as faultless as humanity can fashion." — Woodberry. 

u The Fall of the House of Usher " is nearly as perfect 
in its art. (For Poe's idea of the short prose romance 
as a vehicle of artistic expression, see his review of 
Hawthorne's Tales, Works, Vol. VI.) 

The second division of Poe's tales may be understood 
best from his ingenious tale, " The Gold Bug." Poe's 
brain was keen and electric. He had the analytic 
faculty in a high degree, and he delighted in applying it 
to the solution of almost impossible problems. It is true 
that it is not hard to find the clew in a maze of one's 
own construction. Poe's ability as an analytic thinker 
has therefore been challenged, since he was free to make 
the web from which he was to escape. But one should 
not forget that it requires just as much skill to make a 
successful maze as it does to escape from one already 
constructed. Poe demonstrated fully his analytical 
powers by telling the complete" plot of Dickens' Barnaby 
Rudge, after reading the first magazine instalment of 
the novel, a feat that filled Dickens with amazement. 
With his tale, " The Murders in the Rue Morgue," Poe 
may be said to have originated the modern detective 



EDGAR ALLAN POE. 181 

story. "The Gold Bug" is a tale of the recovery of a 
vast buried treasure through the deciphering of an 
almost impossible cryptogram. 

Required Reading. — "Ligeia;" "The Fall of the House of 
Usher;" " The Gold Bug." 

The rest of Poe's tales need not be mentioned. Their 
style is clear and seemingly definite, but the impression 
left on the reader is always vague and awful. Their 
domain is ghost land. Their very titles are fearsome. 
They teach no lesson and serve no purpose, save to chill 
the blood by mere revolting physical horror. In his 
best tales Poe's art is equal to Hawthorne's. His plots 
are arranged with great skill, and the reader is drawn 
rapidly to the climax in the way that will most com- 
pletely unnerve him. Poe's one thought was of the 
effect he was producing on his reader. Instruction and 
moral lessons had, he maintained, no place in fiction. 

Poe's Character and Rank. — The faults of no Ameri- 
can author have been so paraded before the public as 
those of Poe. Griswold, his first biographer, dwelt at 
length upon his failings, but a more charitable view 
has been taken by later writers. Willis, who knew him 
intimately, declared that " he was punctual and industri- 
ous, quiet, patient, gentlemanly, commanding the utmost 
respect and good feeling." In his home Poe was at his 
best. Passionately devoted to his wife and her mother, 
his domestic life was well-nigh faultless. When sober 
he took the greatest pains with his productions. He 
rewrote his earlier poems many times, some of his most 



182 AMERICAN LITERATURE. 

haunting melodies being the result of the most exacting 
effort. 

" On the roll of our literature Poe's name is inscribed with the 
few foremost, and in the world at large his genius is established as 
valid among all men. Much as he derived nurture from other 
sources he was the son of Coleridge by the -weird touch in his 
imagination, by the principles of his analytic criticism, and the 
speculative bent of his mind. An artist primarily, whose skill, 
helped by the finest sensitive and perceptive powers in himself, 
was developed by thought, patience, and endless self -correction 
into a subtle deftness of hand unsurpassed in its own work, he 
belonged to the men of culture instead of those of originally per- 
fect power; but being gifted with the dreaming instinct, the myth- 
making faculty, the allegorizing power, and with no other poetic 
element of high genius, he exercised his art in a region of vague 
feeling, symbolic ideas, and fantastic imagery, and wrought his 
spell largely through sensuous effects of color, sound, and gloom, 
heightened by lurking but unshaped suggestions of mysterious 
meanings. Now and then gleams of light and sketches of lovely 
landscape shine out, but for the most part his mastery was over 
dismal, superstitious, and waste places. In imagination, as in 
action, his was an evil genius ; and in its realms of revery he 
dwelt alone." — Woodberry. 

Poe's grave in Baltimore remained without a mark 
until 1875, when a stone was raised to his memory. In 
1885 a memorial tablet was placed in the New York 
Museum of Art with the inscription 

" He was great in his genius, unhappy in his life, wretched in 
his death, but in his fame he is immortal." 



XII. 
THE ORATORS. 

That the art of oratory reached its highest develop- 
ment in America during the first half of the nineteenth 
century was the direct result of the spirit of the age. 
Politics held the first place in the popular mind, but 
in politics everything turned on one great, burning 
issue, — slavery. Never was there a question that 
divided public opinion more sharply, never was there 
an issue that was fought and defended with more bitter- 
ness. The history of the legislation of the period is 
but the story of this one question, and of the problems 
which grew from it. Congress became the scene of 
fierce and prolonged debates. It was a school from 
which came some of the most wonderful orators of the 
century. 

The two parties were of almost equal strength. New 
States were admitted in pairs, so that the free and the 
slave territory were kept constantly equal. The first 
alarming crisis came in 1820, when Missouri sought 
admission as a slave State, but under the skilful leader- 
ship of Clay, who framed the measure known as the 
" Missouri Compromise," the danger was averted. The 
relief was only temporary, however, for soon the fight 
waged with still greater fierceness over the "Wilmot 

183 



184 AMERICAN LITERATURE. 

Proviso " and the " Kansas-Nebraska Bill." The debates 
centred about the dangerous doctrine of States Rights. 
The South maintained that the Union was not necessarily 
a homogeneous organism, but rather a league of friendly 
powers which were to act together when convenient, 
but which were otherwise free to follow their own 
counsels. South Carolina even maintained that each 
State was the judge of the legality and constitutionality 
of any act of Congress, and in 1832 actually attempted 
to put in practice this theory. Since both parties pro- 
fessed to " stand upon " the Constitution, this instru- 
ment was studied with extreme care and expounded 
with much learning and rhetoric. During the period, 
the leaders of the Northern forces were Webster and 
Clay; while the South rallied about Calhoun and 
Hayne. 

Daniel Webster (1782-1852). 

" The orator of the Union." 

"Take him for all in all, he was not only the greatest orator this 
country has ever known, hut in the history of eloquence his name 
will stand with those of Demosthenes and Cicero, of Chatham and 
Burke/' — Lodge. 

Life. — (The standard Life of Webster is that by 
George Ticknor Curtis, 1870. In 1851 Webster's works 
were collected in six volumes with a biographical sketch 
by Edward Everett. Webster's Private Correspondence, 
edited by his son, Fletcher Webster, appeared in 1856. 
Among the great mass of Websteriana may be men- 
tioned the Life ^ by Charles Lanman, and that by Henry 
Cabot Lodge, in the American Statesmen Series. The 



THE ORATORS. 185 

best study of the comparative excellence of Webster's 
eloquence is Judge Mellen Chamberlain's speech at the 
Dartmouth College alumni dinner, a work now issued 
in pamphlet form.) 

Daniel Webster was born in Salisbury (now Frank- 
lin), New Hampshire, during the last year of the Revo- 
lution. His father, a strong and daring man, had 
served through the French and Indian War as a mem- 
ber of the famous corps of frontiersmen known as 
" Rogers' Rangers," and during the Revolution he had 
left his little family on their backwoods farm, and had 
served with distinction to the close of the war. Daniel, 
the second son of this family, was weak and delicate. 
For him the severe round of farm life was out of the 
question, and in spite of the straitened resources of the 
hard-working parents, it was decided that he should 
go to college. Under the tutorship of a clergyman in 
a neighboring town, he was fitted, in 1797, for Dart- 
mouth College, from which he was graduated in 1801. 
After teaching for a short time in Fryeburg^ Maine, he 
commenced the study of law in his native town, con- 
tinuing it later in the office of Christopher Gore in 
Boston, and, in 1805, he was admitted to the bar. He 
thereupon practised his profession first in Boscawen, 
and afterwards in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, rising 
with rapid strides to legal prominence. In 1812, he 
was elected to Congress, and the remainder of his life 
was spent in public life or in the practice of his profes- 
sion, of which he was soon the recognized leader. He 
served for three terms as senator from Massachusetts, 



186 AMERICAN LITERATURE. 

and was Secretary of State under both Harrison and 
Fillmore. 

Webster's first great oration was delivered in 1820 at 
the Second Centennial of the landing of the Pilgrims. 
In 1825, he was the orator at the laying of the corner- 
stone of the Bunker Hill Monument, and during the 
following year he was chosen to deliver the eulogy on 
Adams and Jefferson. In 1829, he made the crowning 
speech of his life in the United States Senate, in reply 
to an attack by Robert Y. Hayne of South Carolina. 
During the same year he delivered the famous speech 
at the White murder trial in Salem. 

He died at Marshfield, Massachusetts, Oct. 24, 1852. 

His Personal Appearance. — Mr. Lodge in his admira- 
ble life of Webster says, " There is no man in all history 
who came into the world so equipped physically for 
speech.*' His person was imposing, his head was of 
massive size, his eyes deep-set and piercing, his voice 
powerful and sonorous, giving the impression of vast 
powers held in reserve. Carlyle, who was not usually 
impressed by Americans, wrote to Emerson in 1839 : 

" Not many days ago I saw at breakfast the notablest of all your 
notabilities, — Daniel Webster. He is a magnificent specimen ; you 
might say to all the world, ' This is your Yankee Englishman, such 
limbs we make in Yankeeland.' As a logic fencer, advocate, or 
parliamentary Hercules, one would incline to back him at first 
sight against all the extant world. The tanned complexion ; that 
amorphous, crag-like face ; the dull black eyes under their preci- 
pice of eyebrow, like dull anthracite furnaces, needing only to be 
blown ; the mastiff mouth, accurately closed. I have not traced as 
much of silent Berserkir-rage, that I remember of, in any other 
man." — The Carlyle-Emerson Correspondence. 



THE ORATORS. 187 

When in action Webster swept all before him. Once 
seen when he was deeply stirred, he could never be for- 
gotten. 

" As his feelings warmed the fire came into his eyes ; there was 
a glow on his swarthy cheek ; his strong right arm seemed to sweep 
away resistlessly the whole phalanx of his opponents, and the deep 
and melodious cadences of his voice sounded like harmonious organ 
tones as they filled the chamber with their music." — Lodge. 

As a Master of English Style. — (See Whipple's Amer- 
ican Literature and Essays and Reviews, Vol. I.) As 
the master of a pure and vigorous English prose style, 
Webster has had few equals. His best orations may be 
studied as models of correct diction and rhetorical fin- 
ish. His style may be characterized as majestic. It 
abounds in sonorous and elaborate word pictures. He 
was a clear thinker, and his sentences are as clear as his 
thought. His combinations are accurate and logical, 
and his illustrations are forceful." The orations of Clay 
and Calhoun seem dull and spiritless as we read them 
now; the magnetism of the orator, the tones of his 
voice, the flash of his eye, and the thrill of the occa- 
sion gave the words a life and power which vanished as 
soou as they passed into print. But Webster's orations 
lose nothing with time. They are full of their original 
force and fire. They hold the reader as the orator held 
his audience, and we feel the thrill and excitement of 
the original occasion. It is this that brings the work 
of Webster into the realm of pure literature. 

" In the sphere of literature Webster has a clear title to be held 
as one of the greatest authors and writers of our mother tongue 
that America has produced. I propose to the most competent 



188 AMERICAN LITERATURE. 

critics of the nation that the}- can find nowhere six octavo volumes 
of printed literary production of an American that contain as much 
noble and as much beautiful imagery, as much warmth of rhetoric, 
and of magnetic impression upon the reader as are to be found in 
the collected writings and speeches of Daniel Webster." — Evarts. 

Required Reading. — The Plymouth Oration, The First Bun- 
ker Hill Oration. 



Rtteus Choate (1799-1859). 

Life (by E. G. Parker; by Joseph Neilson, 1884. 
See also selections from the writings of Choate in two 
volumes, with memoir by S. G. Brown ; and Whipple's 
Recollections of Eminent Men, and Essays and Revieivs, 
Vol. II.) . Rufus Choate, a native of Essex, Massachu- 
setts, and a member of the class of 1819 at Dartmouth, 
was in many respects the equal of Webster as an orator. 
He was a man of deep scholarship, of wide and varied 
reading, and refinement of character. As a lawyer he 
has had no superior in America. His mind was accu- 
rate and analytical, singularly adapted to the sifting of 
evidence, while his power over juries was phenomenal. 

His style is peculiar. His intimate knowledge of 
the intricacies of the English tongue, and his deep 
classical education, enriched his oratory. His vocabu- 
lary was exhaustive ; he used adjectives with the skill 
of a painter; and his sentences, with their subdivisions 
within subdivisions, are marvels of length and arrange- 
ment. Some of them contain from four hundred to 
seven hundred words. His best known oration is the 
eulogy delivered on the death of Webster. 



THE ORATORS. 189 

Webster and Choate. — " Webster and Choate, each in a dif- 
ferent way, were perfection. The eloquence of Webster had the 
affluent potentiality of the rising sun, of the lonely mountain, 
of the long, regular, successive surges of the resounding sea. His 
periods are as lucid as light ; his logic was irresistible ; his facts 
came on in a solid phalanx of overwhelming power; his tones 
were crystal clear; his magnificent person towered in dignity, and 
seemed colossal in its imperial grandeur ; his voice grew in volume, 
as he became more and more aroused, and his language, glowing 
with the fire of conviction, rose in swells, and broke, like the great 
ninth wave that shakes the solid crag. His speech, however, was 
addressed always to the reason, never to the imagination. The 
eloquence of Rufus Choate, on the other hand, was the passionate 
enchantment of the actor and the poet, — an eloquence in which 
you felt the rush of the tempest, and heard the crash of breakers, 
and the howling of frantic gales, and the sobbing wail of home- 
less winds in bleak and haunted regions of perpetual night. 
He began calmly, often in a tone that was hardly more than a 
whisper; but as he proceeded the whole man was gradually ab- 
sorbed and transfigured, as into a mountain of fire, which then 
poured forth, in one tumultuous and overwhelming torrent of mel- 
ody, the iridescent splendors of description, and appeal, and humor, 
and pathos, and invective, and sarcasm, and poetry, and beauty, — 
till the listener lost all consciousness of self, and was borne away as 
on a golden river to a land of dreams. The vocabulary of that 
orator seemed literally to have no limit. His voice sounded every 
note, from a low, piercing whisper to a shrill, sonorous scream. His 
remarkable appearance, furthermore, enhanced the magic of his 
speech. The tall, gaunt, vital figure, the symmetrical head, the 
clustered hair, — once black, now faintly touched with gray, — 
the emaciated, haggard countenance, the pallid olive complexion, 
the proud Arabian features, the mournful, flaming brown eyes, the 
imperial demeanor and wild and lawless grace, the poetic person- 
ality, commingled with the boundless resources of his eloquence 
to rivet the spell of altogether exceptional character and genius." 
— William Winter's eulogy on Curtis. 

Suggested Reading. — " Eulogy on Daniel Webster." 



190 AMEBIC AX LITEBATUBE. 

Henry Clay (1777-1852). 
"The great reconciler, the orator of sympathy." 

Life (by Epes Sargent, 1844 ; by Calvin Colton, 1856 ; 
by Carl Schurz, 1890, in American Statesmen Series 
and by others. See also Parton's Famous Americans). 
For a generation the most prominent figure in American 
politics was that of the great Whig leader, Henry Clay. 
Though a Virginian by birth and representing the State 
of Kentucky in the Senate, he was opposed, though not 
radically, to the institution of slavery. He stood mid- 
way between the extremists of both parties, and by his 
great tact he succeeded again and again in uniting them 
when irreconcilable rupture seemed inevitable. The 
Missouri Compromise, forbidding slavery above latitude 
36° 30'; the Nullification Law of 1833; and finally the 
Compromise of 1850, which provided, among other 
things, that California should enter the Union under 
its own constitution, and that slavery should be abol- 
ished in the District of Columbia, are monuments to 
his skill as a mediator, — a skill that postponed for 
many years " the inevitable conflict." 

With little education and almost no literary ability, 
Clay was the master of a persuasive style of oratory. 
Tradition is unanimous in regard to his eloquence, and 
yet the six volumes of his printed speeches are dry and 
lifeless. The life-giving principle has evaporated from 
them. Clay's wonderful popularity and his power over 
audiences was due almost wholly to his magnetic per- 
sonality, his enthusiasm, and his knowledge of human 
nature. 



THE ORATORS. 191 

John Caldwell Calhoun (1782-1850). 

"Calhoun, Clay, Webster! I name them in alphabetical order. 
What other precedence can be assigned them ? Clay, the great leader ; 
Webster, the great orator; Calhoun, the great thinker." — Edward 
Everett. 

Life (by J. S. Jenkins, by H. Yon Hoist, in American 
Statesmen Series, and by others. See Parton's Famous 
Americans). The leader of the South in its debate 
over the doctrine of States Rights was John C. Cal- 
houn of South Carolina, who carried the doctrine to its 
extreme, defending vigorously the Nullification Ordi- 
nance of 1832. Maintaining that not one of the framers 
of the Constitution, not even Washington or Hamilton, 
had contemplated a form of government that would 
bind a State beyond its will, he contended that the 
Constitution was merely a compact between the States; 
that the States were bound only so far as they wished 
to be, and that any one of them might repudiate any 
act of Congress which it deemed illegal or unconsti- 
tutional. 

Notwithstanding his radical position, the moral purity 
of Calhoun's life and the honesty of his convictions com- 
manded the respect even of his opponents. His influ- 
ence was very great. The impress of his severe, logical 
mind is upon every great political measure of his time. 
He was a clear thinker and a logician of the first rank. 
Webster said of his oratory : 

" His eloquence was part of his intellectual character. It was 
plain, strong, terse, condensed, concise ; sometimes impassioned, 
still always severe. Rejecting ornament, not often seeking far for 



192 AMERICAN LITERATURE. 

illustration, his power consisted in the plainness of his propositions, 
in the closeness of his logic, and in the earnestness and energy of 
his manner." 



Edward Everett (1794-1865). 

Life (address on the Life and Public Services of Ed- 
ward Everett by R. H. Dana, Jr. See also Whipple's 
Character and Characteristic Men, and Emerson's " Life 
and Letters in New England "). Few Americans of any 
generation have made a greater impress upon their times 
or have filled more positions of the highest responsibility 
than did Edward Everett. It was not for him to wait 
through slow years for the opportunity for influence 
and power. Fame came to him with a bound. At the 
age of nineteen he had won a national reputation as a 
profound scholar and eloquent preacher ; at twenty-one 
he was offered the chair of Greek in Harvard University, 
his alma mater. 

Everett's scholarship was broad and exact. While 
studying in Europe preparatory to taking the Greek 
chair at Harvard, he was hailed by the savant Cousin, 
as " the best Grecian he had ever known." He brought 
back to America a new intellectual life. Says Emerson, 
who was then an undergraduate, " Germany had created 
criticism in vain for us until 1820, when Edward Everett 
returned from his five years in Europe and brought to 
Cambridge his rich results, which no one was so fitted 
by natural grace and the splendor of his rhetoric to 
introduce and recommend." All listened spellbound to 
his wisdom, as if one of the old Greeks had wandered 



THE ORATORS. 193 

into the present ; indeed Emerson declares that " there 
was an influence on the young people from the genius 
of Everett which was almost comparable to that of Per- 
icles in Athens." 

In 1824, Everett was elected to Congress, where he 
served with distinction during the stormy ten years that 
followed. The rest of his life was but a succession of 
responsible positions. As governor of Massachusetts 
for three terms, as Minister Plenipotentiary to Great 
Britain, as president of Harvard University, as Secre- 
tary of State after the death of Webster, and as United 
States senator, Everett was called upon to solve some 
of the most perplexing problems of his day. 

As a statesman, he ranks second only to Webster and 
Clay ; as a scholar, he has had but few equals in Amer- 
ica ; as a scholarly and finished orator, he was surpassed 
only by Choate ; and as a popular lecturer, he has never, 
in America at least, had an equal. With his Oration on 
Washington, delivered nearly one hundred and fifty 
times in various parts of the United States, he earned no 
less than ninety thousand dollars for the Mount Vernon 
fund, and with many of his other lectures he was no less 
successful. 

" His orations were composed for widely differing* occasions, but 
in each case the treatment is so masterly that one would think the 
subject then in hand had been the especial study of his life. But 
his care did not cease with the preparation ; his voice, gestures, 
and cadences were always in harmony with his theme, so that he 
was absolute master of his audience." — Underwood. 

" The great charm of Mr. Everett's orations consists not so much 
in any single and strongly developed intellectual trait as in that 



194 AMERICAN LITERATURE. 

symmetry and finish which on every page give token of the richly 
endowed and thorough scholar. The natural movements of his 
mind are full of grace, and the most indifferent sentence which 
falls from his pen has that simple elegance which it is as difficult 
to define as it is easy to perceive. His level passages are never 
tame, and his fine ones are never superfine. His style with match- 
less flexibility rises and falls with his subject and is alternately 
easy, vivid, elevated, ornamented, or picturesque, adapting itself to 
the dominant mood of the mind, as an instrument responds to the 
touch of a master's hand. His knowledge is so extensive and the 
field of his allusions so wide that the most familiar views in pass- 
ing through his hands gather such a halo of luminous illustrations 
that their likeness seems transformed and we entertain doubts of 
their identity." — G. S. Hillard. 

Among Everett's orations may be mentioned his Phi 
Beta Kappa Oration of 1824 on American Literature, 
his " Early Days of Franklin," and his Gettysburg Ora- 
tion. He also wrote the life of Washington in the 
Encyclopaedia Britannica, the life of Stark in Sparks' 
American Biography, and several poems. His orations 
were collected in four volumes in 1869. 



XIII. 
THE SECOND CREATIVE PERIOD. 

1837-1861. 

With the passing of the brilliant Knickerbocker group 
of writers the literary sceptre departed for a period from 
New York. Of the thirty-eight names selected by Poe, 
in 1846, as the " literati of New York," after throwing 
out Margaret Fuller, C. P. Cranch, Mrs. Child, and 
others who were only temporary residents of the city, 
scarcely one, aside from Halleck, Willis, Verplanck, and 
Duyckinck, can be found to-day outside of Griswold's 
collections, or the dictionaries of American biography. 

Following the first creative period there came an 
interval of barrenness during which the future of Ameri- 
can literature looked dark and uncertain. Holmes, with 
characteristic terseness, thus pictures the literary field as 
it appeared in 1832 : 

" Willis was by far the most prominent young American author. 
Cooper, Bryant, Dana, Halleck, Drake, had all done their best 
work. Longfellow was not yet conspicuous. Lowell was a school- 
boy. Emerson was unheard of. Whittier was beginning to make 
his way against the writers with better educational advantages 
whom he was destined to outdo and outshine. Not one of the 
great histories, which have done honor to our literature, had 
appeared. Our schoolbooks depended, so far as American authors 
were concerned, on extracts from the orations and speeches of 
Webster and Everett ; on Bryant's ' Thanatopsis,' his lines ' To a 

195 



196 AMERICAN LITERATURE. 

Waterfowl,' and ' The Death of the Flowers ' ; on Halleck's 'Marco 
Bozzaris,' ' Red Jacket,' and ' Burns '; on Drake's ' American Flag,' 
and Percival's ' Coral Grove,' and his ' Genius Sleeping ' and 
'Genius Waking,' — and not getting very wide awake either. 
These could be depended upon. A few other copies of verses 
might be found, but Dwight's l Columbia, Columbia,' and Pier- 
pont's ' Airs of Palestine,' were already effaced, as many of the 
favorites of our day and generation must soon be, by the great 
wave which the near future will pour over the sands in which they 
still are legible." — Introduction to A Mortal Antipathy. 

But the interregnum was not a long one. The years 
between 1831 and 1839 witnessed the publication of the 
first books of Whittier, Sparks, Bancroft, Holmes, Haw- 
thorne, Emerson, Prescott, Hildreth, Motley, Long- 
fellow, and Margaret Fuller. The advent of these 
authors marks the opening of the " Augustan Age " of 
American literature. 

A Mental Revolution. — The line that separates the 
age of Irving from the age of Emerson is not the result 
alone of a geographical shifting of the centres of literary 
production. The transfer of the leadership from New 
York to New England was rather the result of a mental 
revolution which changed the whole character of New 
England and turned into new channels the current of 
its thought and literature. 

The narrow ideals and the fierce intolerance of the 
Puritans could not long endure unmodified, since every 
creed that runs to excess must at' length suffer from a 
reaction. The revolt against Puritanism in England, 
which had been precipitated by the coronation of Charles. 
II. had been sudden and overwhelming. In a moment 
the pendulum had swung from one extreme to the other. 



THE SECOND CREATIVE PERIOD. 197 

| In America the revolution was necessarily more gradual. 
Liberal ideas first became possible under the charter 
granted to Massachusetts by William III. The witch- 
craft delusion, with its revolting display of the worst 
side of Puritanism, opened the eyes of the more 
thoughtful and conservative. A disbelief in miracles 
and portents, in the doctrines of total depravity and 
eternal punishment, began to creep into the minds of 
many. The new spirit gained ground slowly but surely. 
Quakers, Baptists, and Catholics were allowed to build 
churches. Liberal preachers began to fill the pulpits of 
Boston. Even Harvard University, once the stronghold 
of Puritanism, elected a president with liberal views, 
and soon afterward openly joined the new movement. 
During the early part of the present century the revolt 
against Puritanism went to nearly as violent an extreme 
in New England as formerly it had done under Charles 
II. in England. Later on the revolution drifted into 
intellectual and humanitarian channels. 

In this movement, three distinct ideas, corresponding 
to three distinct epochs, may be recognized. The first 
phase commenced in dissent from the principles of Puri- 
tanism, and reached its culmination in the Unitarianism 
of Channing; the second phase was known by the meta- 
physical designation of Transcendentalism ; while in its 
last phase the movement spent its ebbing energies in the 
antislavery agitation preceding the Civil War. 

1. Unitarianism. — The Unitarian movement in 
America commenced in the Congregational churches of 
Massachusetts, at first in a veiled form under the name 



198 ' AMERICAN LITERATURE. 

of Arminianism, but in 1812 open revolt broke out, and 
Jsoon the most influential churches of New England had 
embraced the new ideas. Showers of pamphlets and 
sermons, many of them of wonderful strength and 
excellence, were a striking characteristic of the contro- 
versy that followed. The discussion of the doctrine of 
the Trinity, which was at first prominent, soon gave 
way to numberless other important discussions. But 
the theological side of this great debate need not con- 
cern us. It is only in its after effects that it is of 
interest to the student of American literature. 

2. Transcendentalism. — (See Frothingham's New 
England Transcendentalism. Also lives of Ripley and 
Parker, Emerson's Essays, Miss Alcott's Transcendental 
Wild Oats, and White's Philosophy of American Litera- 
ture, 46-64.) The second phase of the new intellectual 
movement was the Transcendentalism of Ripley and 
Emerson, which was a departure from Unitarianism as 
Unitarianism. had been a departure from Calvinism. It 
was in reality Unitarianism modified by the philosophy, 
of Germany and France. 

To understand this strange episode in our intellectual 
life one must be acquainted somewhat with the spirit of 
the age. Every student of European and of American 
history will recognize the fact that the first half of the 
Nineteenth Century was a " breaking-away period," — a 
time of singular and universal restlessness. In Europe 
political revolutions were everywhere, except in Russia, 
overturning the old order of things. New ideas for the 
uplifting of society, of politics, of ethics, were in the 



THE SECOND CREATIVE PERIOD. 199 

air. In Germany, the school of Kant and Fichte was 
introducing a new philosophy ; in France, Fourier and 
St. Simon were explaining a new science of society 
whose foundations were laid upon cooperation and a 
community of property. The Swedish philosopher, 
Swedenborg, had introduced a new religious system. 
The Swiss reformer, Pestalozzi, was inaugurating a new 
era in the history of education. In medicine the dis- 
cussion of homoeopathy, hydropathy, and many other 
systems was engaging the attention of the profession ; 
while the new sciences, so called, of mesmerism and 
phrenology, as introduced by Gall and Spurzheim, were 
creating much excitement in some circles. Coleridge 
and Southey and Carlyle were arousing England with 
the new German philosophy. 

In America the increased facilities for communication 
with Europe led to an acquaintance with Continental 
thought and literature. A new impetus was given to 
the study of the modern languages. In 1820 Edward 
Everett told in glowing rhetoric of the treasures that 
might be found in the literature and philosophy of Ger- 
many. Channing in 1823, and Bancroft and Hedge in 
1825, made eloquent pleas for an increased attention to 
the literatures of Europe. Numberless translations soon 
appeared, some of them of high rank. As a result of 
this contact with Continental thought, New England 
became infected with the restlessness that had pervaded 
Europe, and a singular spirit of dissent and protest, of 
exoeriment and inquiry, crept into all departments of 
he. 1 intellectual life. 



200 AMERICAN LITERATURE. 

"What a fertility of projects for the salvation of the world! 
One apostle thought all men should go to farming, and another 
that no man should buy or sell, that the use of money was the car- 
dinal evil ; another that the mischief is in our diet. . . . Others 
attacked the system of agriculture, the use of animal manures in 
farming, and the tyranny of man over brute nature ; these abuses 
polluted his food. . . . Others assailed particular vocations, as 
that of the lawyer, that of the merchant, of the manufacturer, of 
the clergyman, of the scholar. Others attacked the institution of 
marriage as the fountain of social evils." — Emerson. 

Required Reading. — Emerson's "New England Reformers." 
Brook Farm. — (See Emerson's " Life and Letters in 
New England"; Hawthorne's Blithedale Romance, and 
J. H. U. Studies, Vol. 6.) In the words of Frothing- 
ham, the historian of the movement, " it was felt at this 
time, 1842, that in order to live a religious and moral 
life in sincerity, it was necessary to leave the world of 
institutions and to reconstruct the social order from new 
beginnings." Accordingly, many of the reformers actu- 
ally joined themselves into communities " where every- 
thing was common," as Lowell phrased it, " except 
common sense." In a short time there were as many as 
thirty of these organizations, each with its own peculiar 
regulations and ideals, but, as might have been expected, 
all died speedy and natural deaths. 

The most famous of all these phalansteries was that 
at Brook Farm. This community, organized in 1842 by 
George Ripley as a stock company, purchased two hun- 
dred acres near West Roxbury, Massachusetts, eight 
miles from Boston. Among the best known of its mem- 
bers were Hawthorne, Charles A. Dana, and Geo "ge 
William Curtis. Emerson and Margaret Fuller, who 



THE SECOND CREATIVE PERIOD. 201 

were in full sympathy with the movement, made fre- 
quent visits to the farm, while Theodore Parker, A. B. 
Alcott, W. H. Channing, and others gave it their hearty 
support. " To remodel society and the world into a 
4 happy family,' " says Holmes, " was the aim of these 
enthusiasts." Channing wrote that the object of the 
community was to found an association " in which the 
members should live together as brothers, seeking one 
another's elevation and spiritual growth." The daily 
life of the community consisted of cooperative farm 
work, reading, lecturing, writing, and conversation. 
This ideal life of " plain living and high thinking " con- 
tinued until 1846, when the community building burned. 

Although the Brook Farm Community ended in 
seeming failure, its influence on American thought and 
literature cannot be overlooked. It brought together 
for a period of several years the best thinkers of New 
England. At no other time in our history has there 
been such a dwelling together of intellectual leaders. 
When the community scattered, its members bore away 
the impress of the most powerful minds of the genera- 
tion. 

The Philosophical Basis of this movement, which has 
been widely discussed under the name of Transcenden- 
talism, can be explained best by Emerson, who appeared 
to know the most about it. 

"What is popularly called Transcendentalism among us is Ideal- 
ism : Idealism as it appears in 1842. As thinkers, mankind have 
ever been divided into two sects, — Materialists and Idealists ; the 
first class founding on experience, the second on consciousness ; 



202 AMERICAN LITERATURE. 

the first class beginning to think from the data of the senses, the 
second class perceive that the senses are not final, and say, the 
sensesgive us representations of things, but what are the things 
themselves, they cannot tell. The Materialist insists on facts, on 
history, on the force of circumstances and the animal wants of 
man; the Idealist on the power of thought and of will, on inspi- 
ration, on miracle, on individual culture. . . . The idealism of 
the present day acquired the name of transcendental from the use 
of that term by Immanuel Kant, who replied to the sceptical 
philosophy of Locke, which insisted that there was nothing in the 
intellect which was not previously in the experience of the senses, 
by showing that there was a very important class of ideas, or im- 
perative forms, which did not come by experience, but through 
which experience was acquired ; that these were intuitions of the 
mind itself, and he denominated them transcendental forms." — 
The Transcendentalist. 

The Dial. — Emerson was generally recognized as the 
leader of the movement, although Alcott, Margaret 
Fuller, and George Ripley were more active in dis- 
seminating its principles. The village of Concord, the 
home of Emerson, Thoreau, Ripley, and Alcott, became 
the transcendental centre. In 1840, The Dial first 
appeared, a paper that was to be the mouthpiece of the 
new philosophy, edited first by Margaret Fuller, after- 
wards by Emerson, who contributed upwards of forty 
articles in prose and verse. Thoreau wrote for nearly 
every number, while Theodore Parker, Alcott, Ripley, 
James Freeman Clarke, William Ellery Channing, Wil- 
liam Henry Channing, C. P. Cranch, and many others 
were frequent contributors. 

" It was conceived and carried out in a spirit of boundless hope 
and enthusiasm. Time and a narrowing subscription list proved 
too hard a trial, and its four volumes remain stranded, like some 



THE SECOND CREATIVE PERIOD. 203 

rare and curiously patterned shell which a storm of yesterday has 
left beyond the reach of the receding waves." — Holmes. 

3. Antislavery. — The last phase of the movement 
towards intellectual and spiritual freedom was the abo- 
lition agitation, which, after a stormy career, was put to 
rest by the Civil War. It began in 1831, with Garri- 
son's Liberator. The movement was 

" at first religious and pious, addressing itself to the churches 
and clergy, and with such success that in 1835 there had been 
formed throughout the country not less than two thousand anti- 
slavery societies, whose members belonged mostly to the evangeli- 
cal churches. But in that year the South became alarmed and 
angry and the politicians and commercial men set themselves to 
stem the tide of fanaticism, as they termed it. The cry of ' The 
Union in danger ' was raised, a fierce persecution was excited, the 
abolitionists were mobbed in all quarters, even in Boston itself, 
and the two thousand antislavery societies vanished like the phan- 
toms of a dream. The churches and the clergy, with few excep- 
tions, bent to the storm, and the leading divines of nearly all the 
great sects became apologists for slavery or silent on the subject. 
A small body of abolitionists, however, stood firm, and held to 
their principles in defiance of popular rage and outrage. Their 
struggle changed its character, and from a protest against black 
slavery it became a hand-to-hand contest for white liberty of 
speech and of the press." — Robert Carter. 

The Transcendentalists, though generally opposed to 
slavery, were not all of them abolitionists. Many of 
them, indeed, were openly opposed to abolition. Yet the 
two movements started from the same fountain head. 
Garrison was the leader of the movement; Whittier 
was its poet, Sumner its representative in Congress, 
Mrs. Stowe its novelist, and Wendell Phillips its orator. 
The work of these brave leaders closed the period. 



XIV. 
THE UNITARIAN LEADERS. 

William Ellery Changing (1780-1842). 

" There is one word that covers every cause to which Charming 
devoted his talents and his heart, and that word is Freedom. Liberty 
is the key of his religious, his political, his philanthropic principles. 
Free the slave, free the serf, free the ignorant, free the sinful. Let 
there be no chains upon the conscience, the intellect, the pursuits, or 
the persons of men." — Bellows. 

As Charming was three years the senior of .Irving, 
and as his life-work was nearly done at the opening of 
the second creative period, he belongs chronologically 
with the Knickerbockers. But the work of Channing 
cannot logically be considered apart from that of Emer- 
son and his followers. He was the morning star that 
ushered in the new era, — the pioneer who made, to a 
large degree, the new era possible. 

Life (by W. H. Channing, 1848; by C. T. Brooks; 
by Miss Peabody ; by H. W. Bellows. There is a fine 
description of Dr. Channing in George William Curtis' 
Trumps. See also Prescott's Miscellanies ; and Lowell's 
" Elegy on the Death of Dr. Channing"). 

Channing was born in Newport, Rhode Island, in 1780, 
and he entered Harvard at the age of fourteen. After 
his graduation he spent a short time as tutor in a private 
family in Virginia, studied theology at Cambridge, and 

204 



THE UNITARIAN LEADERS. 205 

in 1803 took charge of the Federal Street Church in 
Boston, where his sermons soon attracted wide attention 
on account of their solemnity, fervor, and beauty. 

In 1812 occurred the separation between the two 
wings of the Congregational Church, but it was not 
until 1819, when he boldly and clearly set forth his 
views in the sermon at the ordination of Jared Sparks 
at Baltimore, that Channing became the generally rec- 
ognized head of the Unitarian faction, a position that he 
was to hold until his death. Channing's sermons during 
this period were eloquent and thoughtful, and in their 
printed form are now one of the best commentaries on 
Unitarianism that have ever been written. Their influ- 
ence on the times cannot be overestimated. In the words 
of Emerson, — 

" Dr. Channing whilst he lived was the star of the American 
church, and we then thought, if we do not still think, that he left 
no successor in the pulpit. He could never be reported, for his eye 
and voice could not be printed, and his discourses lose their best 
in losing them. He was made for the public; his cold tempera- 
ment made him the most unprofitable private companion ; but all 
America would have been impoverished in wanting him. We 
could not then spare a single word he uttered in public, not so 
much as the reading a lesson in Scripture or a hymn, and it is 
curious that his printed writings are almost a history of the times, 
as there was no great public interest, political, literary, or even 
economical (for he wrote on the tariff), on which he did not leave 
his brave and thoughtful opinion. A poor little invalid all his life, 
he is yet one of those men who indicate the power of the American 
race to produce greatness." — Life and Letters in New England. 

Channing was one of the active spirits in the Tran- 
scendentalist movement, being one of the founders of 
the Transcendentalist Club that originated the Brook 



206 AMERICAN LITERATURE. 

Farm Community. But for his death he would have 
been undoubtedly its most prominent leader. During 
his whole life he was an active antislavery worker. 

As a Writer. — But aside from his work as a religious 
and social reformer in the van of a movement that was 
destined to accomplish great things, Channing was a 
man of letters of high rank, exerting an influence on 
pure literature in New England equalled by no one 
before the time of Emerson. In 1822 he visited Europe, 
returning full of enthusiasm, — an enthusiasm which he 
at once imparted to all about him. In his Remarks on 
a National Literature, 1823, he plead with eloquence for 
an American literature that should be free from Euro- 
pean fetters. 

" We are more and more," he said, " a reading people. Books 
are already among the most powerful influences here. The question 
is, Shall Europe, through these, fashion us after its pleasure ? 
Shall America be only 1 an echo of what is thought and written 
under the aristocracies beyond the ocean ? " 

m 

Shortly after this address Channing published in the 
Christian Examiner, the literary organ of the new church, 
an essay on The Life and Character of Napoleon Bona- 
parte, and in 1826 The Character and Writings of John 
Milton, a powerful production, easily the superior of the 
essay on the same subject which made Macaulay famous 
three years later. " The appearance," says Underwood, 
"of these essays marks an era in American letters." 
Emerson declared them "the first specimens in this 
country of that large criticism which in England had 
given power and fame to the Edinburgh Review" 



THE UNITARIAN LEADERS. 207 

Their style is elegant yet simple ; their judgments 
weighty and valuable. Throughout they give evidence 
of an imaginative power and a cultivated critical taste 
of high order. Of the same rank is Channing's essay 
on Fenelon and his Self- Culture, a work that has proved 
stimulating to thousands of young people. 

Suggested Reading. — Self-Culture and the Essay on Milton. 

The" Unitarian movement was aided by some of the 
most scholarly and eloquent clergymen of the century. 
Among these were Henry Ware (1764-1845) ; his son 
Henry Ware (1794-1843), a theologian and hymn 
writer; Andrews Norton (1786-1853), a strong and 
scholarly thinker ; and Orville Dewey (1794-1882), one 
of the profoundest thinkers of his generation. Later 
on the movement gained strength by the accession of 
men like Theodore Parker, J. S. Buckminster, and 
James Freeman Clarke, a voluminous writer on many 
subjects and a leader among the Transcendentalists. 
Of these later Unitarians, Buckminster, a classical 
scholar of high rank, exerted an influence on the moral 
and intellectual life of New England second only to 
that of Channing. 



XV. 

THE TRANSCENDENTALISTS (1). 

Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882). 

" The sage of Concord." 

"His teachings have become part of the unconsciously acquired 
creed of every young American of good and gracious nature." — C. E. 

Norton. 

Life. — (The standard life of Emerson is that by his 
literary executor, J. Elliot Cabot. Dr. Holmes' shorter 
sketch in the American Men of Letters Series, the best 
estimate of Emerson that has yet appeared, is invaluable 
in the class room. Among the great mass of Emerso- 
niana may be mentioned Emerson in Concord, by his 
son, Dr. Edward W. Emerson; the Carlyle- Emerson 
Correspondence ; Alcott's Concord Days ; G. W\ Cooke's 
Ralph Waldo Emerson, his Life, Writings, and Philoso- 
phy ; Guernsey's Sketch of Emerson; Conway's Emer- 
son at Home and Abroad; Whipple's Recollections of 
Eminent Men, and George William Curtis' Literary 
and Social Essays.') 

No man was ever more fortunate in his ancestry 
than was Ralph Waldo Emerson. On both sides, his 
family from early times had been remarkable for its 
college graduates and clergymen, all of them, men of 
unusual character and force. His grandfather, the Rev. 

208 



THE TRANSCENDENTALISTS. 209 

William Emerson, served for many years as pastor of 
the Congregational Church in Concord, dwelling in 
the " Old Manse," which had been built for him in 1765. 
From its windows the old pastor had watched the fight 
at Concord Bridge scarce a bow-shot away. On that 
memorable April morning the town had been thrown 
into a fever of excitement by the arrival of the British 
regulars, some eight hundred strong. 

"At first it was thought best that our men should face the 
enemy, as few as they were, and abide the consequences. Of 
this opinion, among others, was the Rev. William Emerson, the 
clergyman of the town, who had turned out amidst the first in the 
morning to animate and encourage his people by his counsel and 
patriotic example. ' Let us stand our ground,' said he ; ' if we die, 
let us die here ! ' " — Shattuck's History of Concord. 

William Emerson, a son of this sturdy Revolutionary 
hero, after graduating at Harvard in 1789, settled in 
Boston where, as a prominent member of the Anthology 
Club and pastor of the First Church, he exerted a wide 
influence. Here, May 25, 1803, was born Ralph Waldo 
Emerson. The early death of the father, in 1810, left 
the little family in comparative poverty, but by the 
heroic exertions of the mother all of the six children 
were enabled to obtain a good education. 

By the practice of the strictest economy Emer- 
son was able to complete the course at Harvard in 
1821. Some years later, having been graduated from 
the Divinity School, he was ordained as colleague of 
the Rev. Henry Ware of the Second Church in Bos- 
ton, where he labored faithfully for the next three 
years. 



210 AMERICAN LITERATURE. 

But Emerson, although a brilliant preacher, had small 
aptitude for pastoral work. He had little sympathy 
with much of the church routine. He had entered the 
profession almost from necessity, since it was the only 
one at that time which offered any attractions for the 
quiet, scholarly mind. In 1832 his health was in a 
broken condition. The death of his wife the year 
before had almost overwhelmed him. He found him- 
self more and more out of sympathy with the church, 
and accordingly, after a thoughtful sermon on the Com- 
munion, he resigned his pastorate, and the next year 
made a voyage to Europe on account of his health, 
though he afterwards wrote : " It was mainly the attrac- 
tion of three or four writers, of whom Carlyle was one, 
that led me to Europe." In Italy he found Walter Sav- 
age Landor. In England he met Coleridge, De Quincey, 
Wordsworth, and Carlyle. With Carlyle, who at this 
time was almost unknown, Emerson formed a most 
pleasing friendship, one almost without precedent in our 
literary history. " I shall never forget the visitor," said 
Mrs. Carlyle, "who years ago in the desert descended 
on us out of the clouds, as it were, and made one day 
there look like enchantment for us, and left me weeping 
that it was only one day." The correspondence between 
Carlyle and Emerson, which was continued during their 
lifetime, is of the greatest value. Nowhere else can one 
get so near the real lives of these two intellectual 
leaders. The correspondence is a strong connecting 
link between the literatures of the two nations. 

Suggested Reading. — The Carlyle-Emerson Correspondence. 



THE TRANSCENDENTALISTS. 211 

Upon his return to America Emerson made his first 
appearance as a popular lecturer. In 1834 he removed 
to Concord, the ancestral home of the family, living at 
first in the " Old Manse," and in this quiet little village 
the rest of his life was spent. 

The life of Emerson, like that of the scholar gener- 
erally, had few striking incidents. Aside from his 
lecture tours and two more visits to Europe, one in 
1847, the other in 1872, his life was passed quietly in 
his rural home. There can be no better picture of his 
private life than that drawn by his own pen in a letter 
to Carlyle dated May 10, 1838. 

" I occupy, or improve, as we Yankees say, two acres only of 
God's earth ; on which is my house, my kitchen garden, my orchard 
of thirty young trees, my empty barn. My house is now a very 
good one for comfort and abounding in room. Besides my house 
I have, I believe, $22,000, whose income in ordinary years is six 
per cent. I have no other tithe or glebe except the income of my 
winter lectures which was last winter $ 800. Well, with this in- 
come, here at home I am a rich man. I stay at home, and go 
abroad, at my own instance. I have food, warmth, leisure, books, 
friends. Go away from home, I am rich ho longer. I never have 
a dollar to spend on a fancy. As no wise man, I suppose, ever was 
rich in the sense of freedom to spend, because of the inundations of 
claims, so neither am I, who am not wise. Bat at home I am rich, 
— rich enough for ten brothers. 

u My wife Lidian is an incarnation of Christianity, — I call her 
Asia, — and keeps my philosophy from Antinomianism ; my 
mother, — whitest, mildest, most conservative of ladies, whose only 
exception to her universal preference for old things is her son; 
my boy a piece of love and sunshine, well worth my watching from 
morning to night ; these and three domestic women who cook and 
sew and run for us, make all our household. Here I sit and read 
and write, with very little system, and as far as regards composi- 
tion, with the most fragmentary result : paragraphs incompressible, 
each sentence an infinitely repellent particle. 



212 AMERICAN LITERATURE. 

" In summer, with the aid of a neighbor, I manage my garden ; 
and a week ago I set out, on the west side of my house, forty young 
pine trees to protect me, or my son, from the wind of January. 
The ornament of the place is the occasional presence of some ten or 
twelve persons, good and wise, who visit us in the course of the 
year." 

As the years went by, the home of Emerson became 
the literary centre of America. Margaret Fuller and 
The Dial group often met there ; Thoreau was a daily 
visitor; Alcott and Hawthorne were near neighbors, 
while all the prominent authors of America, and dis- 
tinguished guests from every land, found entertainment 
under its hospitable roof. 

Emerson's working life ended in 1867. The year 
before he had written the sad sweet poem " Terminus," 
which was* in a sense, his valedictory to the world. 
His memory gradually failed him. He delighted to 
read, but he immediately forgot all as soon as he had 
laid the book aside. " My memory hides itself," he 
said ; yet, assisted by his daughter Ellen, he continued 
to lecture almost to the time of his death. Fully con- 
scious as he was of his failing powers, he did not com- 
plain, though a few months before his death he made 
the sad remark " when one's wits begin to leave him it is 
time the heavens opened and took him to themselves." 

He died in April, 1882, and was buried in the Sleepy 
Hollow Cemetery at Concord, under the same pines 
beneath which rest Hawthorne and Thoreau. 

Nature. — The little book Nature, written in the 
" Old Manse" and published in September, 1836, — 
Emerson's first real message to the world, — remains 



THE TRANSCENDENTALISTS. 213 

the most intense of all his writings. Although it met 
with an indifferent reception, selling in twelve years 
only five hundred copies, it was, nevertheless, an epoch- 
making book. It is vague and incomprehensible to the 
practical mind ; it soars at times into regions where 
only a few can follow, but it opens a new vista to 
those who can understand it. Starting with the as- 
sumption that the universe is composed of Nature and 
the Soul, Emerson considers their relations, and the 
ministry of nature to the senses ; the office of love and 
beauty ; the derivation of languages from nature and 
the influence of nature upon the intellect, the moral 
sense, and the will. As he proceeds, he falls more and 
more into the language of rhapsody. He dwells upon 
the principles of Idealism, expressing doubts as to the 
existence of matter, thus planting the first seeds of 
Transcendentalism ; he shows that natural and spiritual 
laws are identical, and discusses the problems of neces- 
sity and human freedom, aiming a blow at Calvinism. 
"It fell like an aerolite," says Holmes, "unasked for, 
unaccounted for, unexpected, almost unwelcome, — a 
stumbling-block to be got out of the well-trodden high- 
way of New England scholastic intelligence." The date 
of its publication may be taken as the opening of a new 
era in American thought. 

Just one year after the publication of Nature, Emerson 
delivered the oration before the Phi Beta Kappa Society 
of Cambridge, on " Man Thinking or the American 
Scholar." In this oration he touched again upon the 
leading points of his essay Nature, but with none of 



214 AMERICAN LITERATURE. 

the vagueness and mysticism of that work. One critic 
declares that in it nearly all of Emerson's leading ideas 
found expression. Its effect was electrical. In the 
words of Lowell, " It was an event without any former 
parallel in our literary annals — a scene to be always 
treasured in the memory for its picturesqueness and 
its inspiration. What crowded and breathless aisles! 
What windows clustering with eager heads ! " Dr. 
Holmes called it "our intellectual Declaration of In- 
dependence." 

Required Reading. — " The American Scholar." 

Emerson's Essays. — Nearly all of Emerson's prose 
work was first given to the public in the form of lect- 
ures. He was pre-eminently a lecturer, never once 
in all his writings forgetting that he was addressing 
an audience. After tiring of one lecture, he would lay 
it aside and begin another. When enough had col- 
lected to make a small volume, he would revise and 
polish them with care and in due time give them to 
the world in book form. 

The most of Emerson's essays have single words for 
titles. Often the subject is only a starting-point from 
Essays, First which the author makes excursions into 

Essays, Second wide and rich fields ' A11 of his WOrk is 

Series. 1844. discursive in its nature, so much so that 

Representative . 

Men. 1850. one can rind a thought from him on almost 

Conduct of Life. eyery sub j ect i ma gi na ble. His sentences 

Society and are well-nigh perfect in form, yet they do 

Letters and not always yield their meaning without -a 

1875. mental struggle on the part of the reader, 



THE TRANSCENDENTALISTS. 215 

nor did Emerson intend that they should. To read him 
intelligently one must think, and think carefully. Em- 
erson's essays teach the reader mental alertness ; they 
lead him into new fields where he must shift for himself; 
they open new vistas and furnish new ideas. More 
young men and women have learned to think through 
the influence of Emerson than through that of any other 
modern writer. 

Required Reading. — " Self-Reliance," "Friendship," "Man- 
ners," "Compensation," "History," "Character." 

Representative Men. — In 1847 Emerson made a lect- 
ure tour through the principal cities of England, and 
three years later he selected seven of these lectures to 
be published under the title Representative Men. These 
were, in order, " The Uses of Great Men " ; " Plato, or 
the Philosopher " ; " Swedenborg, or the Mystic " ; 
" Montaigne, or the Skeptic " ; " Shakespeare, or the 
Poet " ; " Napoleon, or the Man of the World " ; and 
" Goethe, or the Writer." 

This book should be read in connection with Carlyle's 
Heroes and Hero-Worship. Nowhere else have we such 
good ground for a comparison between the two authors, 
for here both were on the same ground. Like Carlyle, 
Emerson delighted in men of power, in masters of the sit- 
uation, in masters of men. But the list of heroes chosen 
by each is characteristic. Swedenborg and Montaigne 
would have been the last men chosen by Carlyle, 
who seems to have chosen his heroes — Mahomet, 
Dante, Luther, Burns, Cromwell — on account of their 
positiveness, their sincerity to a great principle. No- 



216 AMERICAN LITERATURE. 

where else do Emerson's prejudices and opinions show 
forth more clearly. The book may be regarded as his 
strongest and most characteristic work. 

Like Hawthorne, Emerson succeeded in producing a 
bright and readable book of his impressions of English 
life and character. This work, which appeared in 1850 
under the title English Traits, does not attempt, like a 
guide-book, to give a consecutive account of its author's 
journeyings. It is rather the note-book of an observer 
and thinker, — full of skilful touches and thoughtful 
deductions. No more fearless and faithful characteriza- 
tion of the English people has ever been written by an 
American. Aside from a few of his poems, like " Good 
Bye," "To Ellen," « Walden," " Dirge," " Threnody," 
and " Terminus," English Traits is the only autobio- 
graphical fragment from Emerson's pen. 

Emerson's Prose Style. — (Lowell's My Study Win- 
dows ; Birrell's Obiter Dicta, Series II. ; Morley's Critical 
Miscellanies; Stedman, V.; Richardson, I., 330-370; 
Curtis' Literary and Social Essays.') Emerson's style 
may be characterized by the word epigrammatic. His 
essays are collections of brilliant, often aphoristic, sen- 
tences, joined loosely together. One may open his 
books at random, and almost without fail alight upon 
a sentence that might stand alone. Upon his sentences 
Emerson expended the most painstaking toil, polishing 
them as a lapidary does a gem. He chose his words with 
minutest care, weighing each one and always choosing 
the one best fitted to express his precise thought. He 
was a master of condensation ; his sentences are " incom- 



THE TRANSCENDENTALISTS. 217 

pressible." But where Emerson was weak was in com- 
bining power. His essays are mosaics. They read often, 
as an English critic once said, as if their sentences 
had been drawn at random from a hat and patched 
together. Emerson himself once confessed : "In writing 
my thoughts I seek no order or harmony or result. I 
am not careful to see how tney comport with other 
thoughts and other moods. I trust them for that." 

It is interesting to know Emerson's methods of com- 
position. It was his practice 

" When a sentence had taken shape, to write it out in his jour- 
nal, and leave it to find its fellows afterwards. These journals, 
paged and indexed, were the quarry from which he built his 
lectures and essays. When he had a paper to get ready, he took 
the material collected under the particular heading, and added 
whatever suggested itself at the moment. The proportion thus 
added seems to have varied considerably ; it was large in the early 
time, say to about 1846, and sometimes very small in the later 
essays." — Cabot's Emerson. 

But when the critic of Emerson's prose style has com- 
plained of the want of arrangement of the essays and 
the lack of coherence between the parts, he has gener- 
ally very little more to add. T. W. Higginson, after 
observing that " some of his essays are like accidental 
collections of loose leaves from a note-book," makes 
haste to say, "As one makes this criticism, one is 
shamed into silence by remembering many a passage 
of prose and verse so majestic in thought and rhythm, 
of quality so rare and utterance so delicious, as to form 
a permanent addition to the highest literature of the hu- 
man race " ; and Lowell, our greatest literary critic, once 



218 AMERICAN LITERATURE. 

wrote : " A diction at once so rich and homely as his, 
I know not where to match in these days of writing by 
the page ; it is like homespun cloth of gold. The many 
cannot miss its meaning, and only the few can find it." 
Emerson as a Poet. — (Stedman, Ch. V. ; Richardson, 
II. 137-171; Whipple's American Literature ; Joel 
Benton's Emerson as a Poet; Burroughs' Birds and 
Poets.} Though Emerson's influence was exerted 
mainly through his prose, he wrote enough poems to 
make a good-sized volume, and by many he is consid- 
ered to be our greatest poet. " If he is a poet," says 
one critic, " he is our greatest poet," but whether or not 
he is a poet depends upon the definition of the terms 
"poet" and "poetry," and every one may insist on his 
own definition. Dr. Holmes, than whom no other is 
more competent to judge, thus describes Emerson's 
poetical limitations : 

" Full of poetic feeling and with a strong desire for poetical ex- 
pression, Emerson experienced a difficulty in the mechanical part of 
metrical composition. His Muse picked her way as his speech did 
in conversation and in lecturing. He made desperate work now 
and then with rhyme and rhythm, showing that though a born 
poet he was not a born singer. Think of making ' feeble ' rhyme 
with ' people,' 'abroad' with 'Lord,' and contemplate the fol- 
lowing couplet which one cannot make rhyme without actual 
verbicide : 

'Where feeds the moose and walks the surly bear 
And up the tall mast runs the woodpeck-are.' " 

His verses are "often fragmentary in style, like his 
prose ; sometimes they have a simple, monotonous ca- 
dence like the note of a forest bird ; many of them are 



THE TRANSCENDENTALISTS. 219 

little oracular sayings of a single thought, where the 
thought is perfect, but the vehicle homely and awk- 
ward. The greater number of his poems deal with 
themes of the loftiest kind. The average reader sees 
not the least sense in " Brahma," " The Over Soul," 
and "Hamatreya," which are so packed with thought 
that to the thoughtless they seem mere nonsense. 

But after criticising his sense of melody and his occa- 
sional mysticism, the reader of Emerson's poems has 
little ground left for accusation. No one can deny 
that he had a brilliant imagination, a sensitive sense of 
beauty, and keen poetic insight. Even his prose is full 
of poetry. 

He used the poetic form sparingly and only for his 

most perfect thoughts. He spoke ever in verse when 

he wished to speak at his best. No one can know the 

purest and most ethereal part of Emerson's domain 

until he has lived for a season with Emerson's poems. 

He is not always inartistic and obscure. Many of his 

poems are as clear as light, and as musical as any in the 

language. " The Snow Storm," " The Humble Bee," 

" The Rhodora," and " Concord Hymn," judged by any 

standard whatever, are well-nigh perfect. The " Concord 

Hymn," sung at the dedication of the battle monument, 

April 19, 1836, is in itself enough to place its author in 

the front rank of poets. 

Required Reading. — "The Rhodora," "The Humble Bee," 
" The Snow Storm," " Brahma," " Concord Hymn." 

The Influence of Emerson. — No other writer has done 
more for the independence of American thought. '" We 



220 AMERICAN LITERATURE. 

were," said Lowell, "still socially and intellectually 
moored to English thought till Emerson cut the cable 
and gave us a chance at the dangers and glories of 
blue water." His impress is upon much of the best lit- 
erature of our times. Many who are now intellectual 
leaders first learned to think from perusing his pages. 
Upon the circle of his friends, who listened to his words 
as to those of a sage, Emerson's influence was very great. 

" One had to be more than human to remain in the presence of 
such a nature and not betray the fact. Thoreau felt the perilous 
singling until his tones and his mode of speaking caught the trick 
of Emerson so nearly that the two men could hardly be separated 
in conversation. What wonder that Channing, Bartol, Alcott, and 
the rest, strong and stately men, . . . felt, to some slight deflection 
of their orbit, the unintentional, if not unconscious, attraction of 
the mild Jupiter so near them. Hawthorne and Margaret Fuller 
fled and saved themselves, but even they betrayed during their 
Concord residence a faint Emersonian adumbration. The fact is, 
no one meeting Emerson was ever the same again. His natural 
force was so restless and so imperceptible that it commanded men 
before they were aware. . . . Concord contained, during Emer- 
son's solstitial years, a great lighthouse, shining far and wide, and 
showing many ships their goal, but covered with the shreds of 
wrecked barks which had been attracted by its clear, cold, solitary 
flame." — Charles J. Woodbury. 



XVI. 

THE TRANSCENDENTALISTS (2). 

Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862). 

" The poet naturalist." 

" A Yankee Stoic, holding fast the most lofty ideals, and aiming 
always to reduce life to its simplest terms." — Burroughs. 

Life. — (The standard life of Thoreau is that con- 
tributed by F. B. Sanborn to the American Men of 
Letters Series. The best short study of his life is 
Emerson's Memoir. See also Emerson's " Woodnotes " ; 
John Burroughs' Indoor Studies; Lowell's Among my 
Boohs; H. A. Page's Thoreau: his Life and Aims, 
and W. E. Channing's Thoreau: the Poet Naturalist. 
The greater part of Thoreau's writings are autobio- 
graphical in their nature, and from them alone a com- 
plete outline of his life-work and character may be 
drawn.) 

Of the remarkable group of writers that made of 
Concord a literary centre during the age of Emerson, 
Thoreau alone was a native of the town. No one of the 
others identified himself so completely with the little 
village. To him Concord was the centre of the uni- 
verse, and from this standpoint he looked out upon the 
world and its history. It pleased him to believe that 
all the phenomena of nature, from the tropics to the 

221 



222 AMERICAN LITERATURE. 

pole, could be observed about the shores of Walden 
Pond. 

The surroundings of Thoreau's boyhood, like those of 
the poet Whittier, were unliterary and unencouraging. 
His father, a retired merchant of small means, who was 
earning a scanty income at the somewhat unusual trade 
of lead-pencil making, could give his children no 
luxuries. And yet, through the strictest economy, 
Thoreau was able to attend the village school of Con- 
cord and later even to enter Harvard University, where 
he was graduated in 1837, "but," as Emerson says. 
"without any literary distinction." With character- 
istic independence he neglected all studies that he 
deemed unimportant, thoroughly mastering, however, 
all that in any way appealed to his taste. He cared 
nothing for honors, even refusing at last to take his 
diploma, declaring it not worth the five dollars. 

After leaving college he taught for a time in the 
academy at Concord, and soon afterward applied him- 
self to the mastering of his father's craft ; but having 
learned at last to make a perfect pencil, he declared he 
would make no more. Emerson, alluding to this period, 
says that Thoreau now " resumed his- endless walks and 
miscellaneous studies, making every day some new 
acquaintance with nature, though as yet never speak- 
ing of zoology or botany, since, though very studious of 
natural facts, he was incurious of technical and textual 
science." 

The story of these " endless walks " is the story of 
the rest of Thoreau's life. He entered no profession. 



THE TRANSCENDENTALISTS. 223 

The little money that he needed he earned by land 
surveying, gardening, and fence building, but, whatever 
his occupation, he managed, winter and summer, to 
spend half at least of every day in the woods and 
fields. The only variations in his life were when he 
gave an occasional lecture or made an excursion to 
the Maine woods, to Canada, or Cape Cod, from which 
he returned with a sigh of relief to his native W alden. 

A Week on the Concord and Merrimac Rivers. — Two 
years after his graduation from Harvard, Thoreau, ac- 
companied by his brother John, made, in a small boat 
of their own construction, a voyage down the Concord 
and Merrimac rivers. From this experience grew his 
first book, published ten years later. 

" The book is an account of a voyage on far other and larger 
rivers than those named in the title. The rows down the Concord 
and Merrimac but furnish the occasion for the author to launch 
forth upon diverse streams of opinion and speculation, in religion, 
literature, and philosophy. The ' Week ' is really a collection of 
essays tied together by a slight thread of travel. It is not very 
readable, though it contains some of Thoreau's best prose and 
poetry. But the two elements he has put into it do not go well 
together. A book of travels is a book of adventure and observation, 
and the reader does not like to be detained by long dissertations 
upon entirely irrelevant subjects. The temptation to skip them 
and be off down stream with the voyagers is almost irresistible." 
— John Burroughs. 

As the book did not sell, the publishers sent to the 
author nearly the whole edition. It was then that he 
made the remark that he had a library of nine hundred 
volumes, seven hundred of which he had written him- 
self. 



224 AMERICAN LITERATURE. 

Walden. — Thoreau's life has been called a sermon 
from Emerson's text, "Lessen your denominator." In 
an age of extravagance and waste, he showed to the 
world how few the real wants of humanity are. But, 
like many reformers, he carried his views to an extreme. 
He condemned the complex machinery of society ; he 
refused to pay his tax and was put into jail in conse- 
quence ; he never voted, never went to church ; he 
determined to get at the elementary conditions of 
existence and to strip himself of everything not ab- 
solutely essential. With this end in view, Thoreau, 
in 1845, built with his own hands a small house on 
the shore of Walden Pond, a short distance from 
Concord, and there he lived in solitude for two years 
and two months, his expenses for the time being 168.76, 
or about nine cents a day. 

While this was, as Thoreau intended it to be, a ser- 
mon on economy, a rebuke to the extravagant demands 
of the age, it did not, by any means, attack the deep 
foundations upon which society rests. No one can ut- 
terly ignore the demands of civilization without becom- 
ing a wild beast or a savage. Thoreau, even in his hut 
at Walden, was holden in a thousand ways to society. 

"He squatted on another man's land; he borrows an axe; his 
boards, his nails, his bricks, his mortar, his books, his lamp, his 
fish-hooks, his plough, his hoe, all turn state's evidence against him 
as an accomplice in the sin of that artificial civilization which ren- 
dered it possible that such a man as Henry D. Thoreau should 
exist at all." — Lowell. 

Walden, which contains a minute account of the two 
years at Walden Pond, is Thoreau's best bookc It is 



THE TRANSCENDENTALISTS. 225 

full of the wild aroma of the woods. In no other book 
can one come so close to Nature's heart. We hear in it 
the weird cry of the loons over the water; we watch 
the frolics of the squirrels; we observe the thousand 
phenomena of the wonderful little lake; we listen to 
the forest sounds by day and by night; we study the 
tell-tale snow ; we watch, with bated breath, a battle 
to the death between two armies of ants. For minute 
and loving descriptions of the woods and fields, Walden 
has had no rival. 

Thoreau began to keep a journal as early as 1835, and 
throughout the rest of his life it was his custom to 
record with minute care the thoughts and Excursions in 
observations of each day. As a result, he pores™** 
left at his death thirty manuscript volumes £J e Maine 

J . Woods. 

which tell the complete story of his life. Cape Cod. 

Only the two books mentioned above were ousPersoZ?™' 

published during his lifetime, but since his a Yankee in 

death these journals have been drawn upon Early Spring in 

n . -, . , -i'j-ij-i-1, Massachusetts. 

ior eight volumes more, and without doubt summer 
other volumes may yet appear. Of these Winter. 
The Maine Woods and Cape Cod contain some of his 
freshest and most agreeable work. 

Required Reading. — Walden, and The Maine Woods. 

His Nearness to Nature. — Thoreau combined the fine 
instincts and the woodcraft of the Indian with the eye 
and brain of the philosopher. He knew every square rod 
of the Concord woods. He knew Walden Pond and the 
hills about it as a farmer knows his kitchen garden. He 
had studied them for years, both by day and night. 



226 AMERICAN LITERATURE. 

" It was a pleasure and privilege to walk with him. He knew 
the country like a fox or a bird, and passed through it as freely by 
paths of his own. He knew every track in the snow, or on the 
ground, and what creature had taken this path before him. One 
must submit abjectly to such a guide, and the reward was great. 
Under his arm he carried an old music book to press plants ; in his 
pocket his diary and pencil, a spyglass for birds, microscope, jack- 
knife, and twine. ... On the day I speak of he looked for the 
Menyanthes, detected it across the wide pool, and, on examination 
of the florets, decided that it had been in flower five days. He 
drew out of his breast pocket his diary, and read the names of all 
the plants that should bloom on this day, whereof he kept account 
as a banker when his notes fall due. The Cypripedium not due till 
to-morrow. He thought that if he waked up from a trance in this 
swamp, he could tell by the plants what time of the year it was 
within two days. ... He saw as with microscope, heard as with 
ear-trumpet, and his memory was a photographic register of all 
he saw and heard. . . . His intimacy with animals suggested 
what Thomas Fuller records of Butler the apiologist, that 'either 
he had told the bees things, or the bees had told him.' Snakes 
coiled round his leg ; the fishes swam into his hand, and he took 
them out of the water; he pulled the woodchuck out of its hole by 
the tail, and took the foxes under his protection from the hunt- 
ers." — Emerson. 

His Prose Style. — Thoreau showed in a very marked 
degree the influence of Emerson. His biographer, who 
knew him personally, says that he imitated Emerson's 
tones and manners so that it was annoying to listen to 
him. Unconsciously he acquired Emerson's style of 
writing. He became a master of the short, epigrammatic 
sentence. Yet there is often a rudeness and an inartis- 
tic carelessness about Thoreau's stjde that is not at all 
like Emerson. No one has ever excelled him in the 
field of minute description. His acute powers of obser- 
vation, his ability to keep for a long time his attention 



THE TRANSCENDENTALISTS. 227 

upon one thing, and his love of nature and of solitude, 
all lend a distinct individuality to his style. 

But while Thoreau was to a certain degree stamped 
by the more powerful mind of Emerson, it is certain 
that the latter was much influenced by Tnoreau. Emer- 
son was blind to less obvious processes of nature until 
Thoreau opened his eyes. Thus it was with all who 
came in contact with this prophet of the woods and 
fields. It has been Thoreau's mission to open blind 
eyes, to show the tragedies, the comedies, the things of 
beauty, the' marvels and the mysteries, that lie about 
each one of us in field and forest, unseen until we learn 
to see them. He was the parent of the out-of-door 
school of writers represented by John Burroughs, Frank 
Bolles, Bradford Torrey, Olive Thorne Miller, Maurice 
Thompson, and many others. 

Required Reading. — Emerson's " Woodnotes." 



XVII. 
THE TRANSCENDENT ALISTS (3). 

THE DIAL GROUP. 
Amos Bronson Alcott (1799-1888). 

" A pure idealist, not at all a man of letters, nor of any practical 
talent, nor a writer of books ; a man quite too cold and contemplative 
for the alliances of friendship, with rare simplicity and grandeur of 
perception, who read Plato as an equal, and inspired his companions 
only in proportion as they were intellectual." — Emerson. 

A unique figure in an age of singular personalities 
was Amos Bronson Alcott, perhaps the most perfect 
representative of Transcendentalism. He was a mystic 
and a man of visions. In his ideas of reform he went 
farther than any of his companions. He remained a 
vegetarian all his life ; he denounced the use of animal 
manures in agriculture ; he insisted for a time that only 
white clothes should be worn ; he devoted himself to 
several sweeping reforms in education and religion, and 
he attempted to found on his own responsibility a com- 
munity like that at Brook Farm, where he might carry 
into practice his ideas of social and moral reform. 

It was principally through the efforts of Alcott that 
the Transcendental Club was formed in 1836, an organi- 
zation that held meetings at irregular intervals until 
as late as 1850. Upon its roll were such names as 

228 



THE TRANSCENDENTALISTS. 229 

Dr. Channing, Emerson, Ripley, Alcott, Margaret Fuller, 
Theodore Parker, George Bancroft, Dr. Hedge, C. A. 
Bartol, O. A. Brownson, Miss E. P. Peabody, C. P. 
Cranch, Dr. Follen, James Freeman Clarke, Tablets. 1868. 
W. H. Channing, and others. From this Concord Days. 
club grew The Dial. Table Talk. 

1877 

Like Margaret Fuller, Alcott is remem- sonnets and 
bered more from his influence upon his Owwonete. 1879. 
contemporaries than from his writings. As a conversa- 
tionalist he has had few superiors. Lowell, in his Fable 
for Critics, says : 

" And indeed, I believe, no man ever talked better. 
Each sentence hangs perfectly poised to a letter ; 
He seems piling words, but there's royal dust hid 
In the heart of each sky-piercing pyramid. 
While he talks he is great, but goes out like a taper 
If you shut him up closely with pen, ink, and paper." 

He travelled widely at one time, giving " Conversa- 
tions," as he chose to call his lectures, and with these 
he gained a wide circle of admirers. His first writings, 
which were contributed to The Dial under the title of 
" Orphic Sayings," are obscure in the extreme, — Emer- 
son's " Brahma " is sun-clear compared with them. His 
volumes are fragmentary and without great value, al- 
though Concord Days gives now and then a charming 
glimpse of Emerson and his circle. His last volume, 
published in his eightieth year, is made up of personal 
poems written to or about his various friends. 

His daughter, Louisa May Alcott (1832-1888), wrote 
many charming books for young people. Her first sue- 



230 AMERICAN LITERATURE. 

cess was with Hospital Notes, a collection of her letters 
written during her life as an army nurse. These at 
once moved the popular heart in the North, and when, 
in 1867, her Little Women appeared, her name at once 
became a household word in America. Among her 
numerous other books may be mentioned An Old- 
Fashioned Girl, 1869 ; Little Men, 1871 ; and Spinning- 
Wheel Stories, 1884. (See Mrs. E. D. Cheney's Louisa 
May Alcott ; her Life, Letters, and Journals, 1892.) 

Alcott died in Concord, March 4, 1888, and his 
daughter followed him only two days later. 

Maegabet Fuller Ossoli (1810-1850). 

"If Emerson was the soul of the Concord movement, Margaret 
Fuller was the blood." 

"Some of her papers were the undeniable utterances of a true, 
heroic mind ; altogether unique, so far as I know, among the writ- 
ing women of this generation ; rare enough, God knows, among the 
writing men." — Carlyle. 

Life. — (The most complete life of Margaret Fuller is 
that contributed by Thomas Wentworth Higginson to 
the American Men of Letters Series. The Memoirs of 
Margaret Fuller, by Emerson, W. H. Channing, aiid 
J. F. Clarke, which treat her life from the Transcendental 
standpoint, appeared in 1852. Many others, including 
Poe, Bayard Taylor, and Horace Greeley, have written 
memoirs or criticisms of her life and work. Hawthorne's 
caustic sketch of her is preserved in Julian Hawthorne's 
Nathaniel Hawthorne and his Wife; the character 
" Zenobia " in The Blithedale Romance is a study of her 



THE TRANSCENDENTALISTS. 231 

as she appeared at Brook Farm ; Lowell cleverly cari- 
catured her in the Fable for Critics under the name 
"Miranda." See also Julia Ward Howe's Memoir in 
the Eminent Women Series, 1882, and Parton's Life of 
Horace G-reeley.) 

In many respects Margaret Fuller stands, like Poe, 
solitary in our literature. Her strong, masculine per- 
sonality which placed her alone among American 
women, and her keen, peculiar intellect which made 
her a powerful influence on the intellectual men of her 
generation, defy classification. If judged alone by her 
actual literary product, she would deserve but a pass- 
ing notice, yet she is ranked with the great builders 
of American literature. Concerning few American 
writers, save Poe and Whitman, can one find such 
extremes of opinion. Some of her contemporaries 
characterized her as superficially learned, disagreeable, 
warped by intense personal likes and dislikes, domi- 
neering, oracular, inordinately fond of monologue ; while 
others, like Emerson, Carlyle, Channing, and Higgin- 
son, declared her a rare genius, a profound thinker 
and scholar, a fountain of " wit, anecdote, love stories, 
tragedies, oracles " ; " the queen of some parliament of 
love, who carried the key to all confidences and to 
whom every question had been finally referred." To 
these she seemed to breathe out constantly " an inef- 
fably sweet, benign, tenderly humane, and serenely high 
spirit." She is almost the only American author who, 
like a great singer or actor, keeps a place in our mem- 
ories chiefly through the testimony of contemporaries. 



232 AMERICAN LITERATURE. 

Before criticizing Margaret Fuller's life and charac- 
ter, one must take into consideration her early education. 
Her father, a scholarly man, spared no efforts to make 
her a youthful prodigy. Her brain was terribly stimu- 
lated. At the age of six she was poring over Latin verbs; 
at eight she was eagerly reading Shakespeare, Cervantes, 
and Moliere, and before she was twelve she had become 
familiar with the leading masterpieces of the Greek, 
Latin, French, Italian, and English. She was, conse- 
quently, in a few years a phenomenon of learning, " but 
was paying the penalty for undue application in near- 
sightedness, awkward manners, extravagant tendencies 
of thought, and a pedantic style of talk." 

In 1840, when she became editor of The Dial, Mar- 
garet Fuller was regarded as the most intellectual 
woman of America. She had read deeply in the litera- 
ture of Germany, and the German philosophy was at 
her tongue's end. The year before she had translated 
Eckermann's Conversations with Goethe, and the follow- 
ing year she completed a translation of The Letters of 
Gilnderode and Bettine. In every way she was fitted 
to become the oracle of the Transcendentalist move- 
ment. Her literary life, which now began, may be 
divided into three periods. The first may be termed 
the Transcendental period, during which time she pub- 
lished two books : Summer on the Lakes, the journal 
of an excursion to Lake Superior in 1843, and Woman 
in the Nineteenth Century, which had originally appeared 
in The Dial under the title, " The Great Lawsuit." The 
first, which is in many respects her most literary work, 



THE TRANSCENDENTALISTS. 233 

excels in descriptive power. Her condensed and graphic 
pictures of Niagara, of the wild regions about the Great 
Lakes, which were then on the borders of civilization, 
of frontier life in its summer dress, of the boundless 
prairies, of the rapidly advancing tide of civilization, 
abound in life and beauty. Her Woman in the Nine- 
teenth Century is full of force and earnestness. She was, 
in the words of Greeley's introduction to the work, 
"one of the earliest as well as ablest among American 
women to demand for her sex equality before the law 
with her titular lord and master." The book is bold 
and strenuous, and is still readable. 

The second period in Margaret Fuller's career opened 
in 1844, when she removed to New York City to become 
literary editor of Greeley's Tribune. During the twenty 
months of her connection with this paper she produced 
her strongest work. As a critic she had rare powers, 
and her Papers on Literature and Art, collected from 
The Tribune and published in 1846, furnish the best 
basis that we have for an estimate of her powers. " She 
could appreciate, but not create." 

In 1846 she went to Europe and after travelling ex- 
tensively in England and on the Continent found her- 
self, in 1847, in Rome. Six months later she became 
the wife of the Italian Marquis Ossoli, a near friend of 
Mazzini the patriot. She was present in Rome during the 
Revolution of 1848 and a year later during the French 
siege of the city, when she rendered invaluable assist- 
ance in the hospitals. In 1850 she sailed for America 
with her husband and child, but the ship was wrecked 



234 AMERICAN LITERATURE. 

in sight of the American coast and all were lost. The 
literary result of this last period of her life, a history of 
Rome, perished with its author. 

The place which Margaret Fuller will ultimately 
occupy in the history of American letters can only be 
conjectured. " Her genius was not quick to clothe 
itself in the written word," and it seems but fair to 
judge that any literary fame that rests largely upon 
tradition must ultimately be lost. Her genius lay in 
her personal influence. She held frequent " Conver- 
sations," during which her admirers listened with bated 
breath as to a goddess. She drew about her with 
scarcely an effort a circle of the purest and most 
spiritual men and women of New England and she 
ruled it with singular power. And after her death the 
noblest and best minds of both hemispheres united 
to do honor to her memory. 

Suggested Reading. — Emerson's Memoir. 

George Ripley (1802-1880). — (O. B. Frothingham 
in American Men of Letters Series.) Although a scholar 
of great metaphysical and theological acuteness, and a 
critic of high rank exerting through the last years of his 
life a powerful influence as literary editor of the New 
York Tribune, George Ripley is chiefly remembered as 
the founder of the Brook Farm Community. Into this 
idea he threw all of his tremendous zeal and energy. He 
resigned his pulpit in Boston to devote his whole time 
to it, and for it he labored with earnestness and self- 
denial. He was the motive power of the movement. 

With Charles A. Dana (b. 1819) Ripley edited 



THE TRANSCENDENTALISTS. 235 

the New American Cyelopcedia, a work begun in 1855 
and finished in 1863. 

Theodore Parker (1810-1860), the representative of 
Transcendentalism in the pulpit, was a man of intense 
convictions and great activity, a prominent figure in all 
the reforms of his day. His work in every humanitarian 
field was tremendous and his influence was correspond- 
ingly great. Although he wrote enough to fill ten 
volumes, it was never with a literary intent. He was 
a man ot action rather than a producer of literature. 

William Henry Channing (1810-1885), a clergyman 
of much power and influence, became best known in 
America as a vigorous antislavery orator. For a time 
he was prominently connected with the Transcenden- 
talist Club, and he contributed several pieces to The 
Dial. He edited the life and correspondence of his 
uncle, Dr. Channing, and wrote a memoir of Margaret 
Fuller, besides many other works. He went to England 
in 1854, and three years later accepted the pastorate of 
the Hope Street Chapel, Liverpool. With the exception 
of several years passed in Washington during the Civil 
War, he made England his home until his death. His 
eldest daughter is the wife of the English poet, Edwin 
Arnold. 

See Life by O. B. Frothingham. 

William Ellery Channing (b. 1818), another nephew 
of Dr. Channing, an intimate friend of Thoreau and 
Hawthorne, has published five volumes of poems and 
a somewhat rhapsodical study of the life and character 
of Thoreau. 



236 AMERICAN LITERATURE. 

Christopher Pearse Cranch (1813-1891), a native of 
Virginia and a member of the class of 1832 in Columbia 
College, gained renown as a landscape painter, poet 
and translator. His poems often have a rare melody 
and many of his sonnets are nearly faultless. His 
translation of Virgil's JEneid ranks with the great 
translations of the century. 

Jones Very (1813-1880), a Unitarian minister of 
Salem, Massachusetts, characterized by Lowell as the 
"most Hebrew of Saxons," became pre-eminently the 
poet of Transcendentalism on its mystical side. His 
form of expression was chiefly the sonnet, which he 
brought to a high degree of perfection. 

"Religion has informed the sonnet nowhere else with deeper 
meanings. Sometimes the mysticism baffles comprehension, but 
many times the meaning is as fresh and clear as any mountain 
brook, and not infrequently as colorless and cold. Some of these 
sonnets have long since passed over into the religious consciousness 
of New England worshippers. They have been adapted to the 
Sunday service in the form of hymns and chants." — J. W. Chad- 
wick. 

George William Curtis (1824-1892). 

"A Puritan Cavalier." 

Among the younger men who entered the Brook 
Farm Community as students, Charles A. Dana and 
mie Notes of a George William Curtis have won for them- 
Howadji. selves literary distinction. Dana, after ed- 

The Howadji in . . „„ m ,., „ -,^^- -<^^^ 

Syria. iting The Tribune from 1847 to 1862, 

Lotus-Eating, during which time the paper became the 
pers. chief organ of the antislavery movement, 



THE TRANSCENDENTALISTS. 237 

founded in 1868 the New York Sun, of Prue and I. 
which he is still editor (1895); while ^ays from the 
Curtis by his sunny books of travel, his Easy Chair - 
graceful essays and novels, his wonderful oratory, his 
broad culture, and his stainless life, became one of the 
great intellectual influences of his time. 

Life (by Edward Carey, in American Men of Letters 
Series. See also William Winter's address on the life 
and character of George William Curtis). George 
William Curtis was born in Providence, Feb. 24, 1824. 
After attending school for a time at Jamaica Plain, 
Massachusetts, he removed in 1839 with his parents to 
New York, where for a year he was clerk in a mercantile 
house in that city. He was at Brook Farm eighteen 
months, and, attracted by the magnetism of Emerson, 
he passed eighteen months more in Concord, working 
a part of each day on a farm and devoting the rest 
to study. 

In 1846 he went abroad, and for the next four years 
he travelled widely in Europe, Egypt, and Syria. On 
his return he published two graceful volumes of travel, 
Nile Notes of a Howadji (1851), and The Howadji in 
Syria (1852), full of the gorgeous coloring and the 
dreamy atmosphere of the Orient. Delicate humor, 
quaint fancy, and rare refinement breathe from every 
page. These rare qualities, mingled with his descrip- 
tions and adventures, combine to make the " Howadji " 
volumes the most charming of their kind in our liter- 
ature. 

During the summer of 1852 Curtis contributed to 



238 AMERICAN LITERATURE. 

The Tribune a series of letters full of sentiment, poeti- 
cal description, and reflection written from Saratoga, 
Newport, and Lake George, which were soon afterward 
republished under the title Lotus-Eating: a Summer 
Book. During the same year he became connected 
with the newly founded Putnam's Monthly, and shortly 
afterward found himself sole editor of the magazine. 
By the failure of the monthly in 1857, he lost his entire 
fortune. From the columns of Putnam's he republished 
in 1853 The Potiphar Papers, a series of caustic satires 
on the hollowness and sham of New York society life, 
and in 1856 Prue and I, a series of sketches and essays 
connected by a slight thread of story. This volume, 
one of his daintiest creations, would have been a credit 
to Charles Lamb at his best. Curtis attempted but one 
novel, Trumps, which appeared in Harper's Weekly in 
1862. 

Required Reading. — Prue and I. 

After his return from the East Curtis was for a time 
editor of The Tribune. In 1853 he started in Harper's 
Magazine the series of essays on current topics known 
as " The Easy Chair," a department which he conducted 
almost without intermission until his death. The three 
volumes of Essays from the Easy Chair, which have 
been collected and republished since their author's 
death, are a rare addition to American prose literature. 
In them are treated from a contemporary standpoint 
all of the great events of a peculiarly eventful half- 
century. Here and there we catch charming glimpses 



THE TRANSCENDENTALISTS. 239 

of Dickens and Thackeray, of Emerson and Thoreau, 
of Edward Everett and Wendell Phillips, of Jennie 
Lind, — and indeed of all the chief personages of the 
time, while mingled with it all are delightful satires 
on the foibles and fashions, the flippancy and selfishness 
of the day. " In them Mr. Curtis' style has thrown 
off the sensuousness of youth for the richness of ma- 
turity; it is flushed with color, but of a deeper hue than 
that which ran msenad-like through Nile Notes" 

As the editor of Harper's Weekly during thirty-five 
eventful years, Curtis exerted a wide-spread influence 
both on literature and politics. His position in 1884, 
when he "bolted " the Republican party and became the 
leader of a powerful independent faction, is well known. 
He was chairman of the first Civil Service Commission 
and also chairman of the New York Constitutional Con- 
vention ; he declined, in 1876, the Missions to England 
and to Germany, both of which were offered to him, and 
he also declined at various times many other responsible 
positions. 

As an orator he stands with the highest. " He was 
the last great orator," says William Winter, " of the 
school of Everett, Sumner, and Wendell Phillips." 
During the last years of his life he was in almost con- 
stant demand on the lecture platform, and as the orator 
on great occasions. 

Required Reading. — Essays from the Easy Chair, Yol. I.; 
Oration on Wendell Phillips. 



XVIII. 

NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE. 

1804-1864. 

"The rarest genius America has given to literature." — Fields. 

" The greatest imaginative genius since Shakespeare." — Lowell. 

" The great story-teller, whose sweet, pure, perfect prose more than 
deserves the praise that Johnson lavished on the prose of Addison." 
— Stoddard. 

Life. — (In deference to the wish of Hawthorne, ex- 
pressed shortly before his death, his family have per- 
mitted no complete and final biography. To gratify the 
urgent demands of the public, however, Mrs. Hawthorne 
in 1868, 1870, and 1871 published copious selections 
from Hawthorne's note-books, and in 1887 Julian Haw- 
thorne published Nathaniel Hawthorne and his Wife, a 
work in two volumes, made up chiefly of letters. These, 
together with Hawthorne's introductions to his novels 
and tales, and his letters to various persons, which have 
been, from time to time, published, give a large amount 
of valuable biographical matter. In addition to these 
may be mentioned G. P. Lathrop's A Study of Haw- 
thorne, Henry James' Hawthorne in the English Men of 
Letters Series, and J. T. Fields' " Hawthorne " in Yes- 
terdays with Authors. For the literary history of Salem 
see G. B. Loring's History of Essex County, Massachu- 
setts, with biographical sketches of Roger Williams, Na- 

240 



NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE. 241 

thaniel Hawthorne, Benjamin Pierce, Jones Very, W. H. 
Prescott, Rufus Choate, and many others whose lives 
were connected with the city.) 

Few towns in America have in their history and sur- 
roundings more of the elements of romance than has old 
Salem, Massachusetts. Its history dates back to the very 
beginnings of New England; some of the strongest 
characters of the Puritan days were connected with it, 
while within its bounds was enacted the darkest tragedy 
of Colonial times. A bustling seaport in the early days, 
its prestige ebbed away until, when Hawthorne entered 
its Custom House, " its wharf was burdened with decayed 
wo&den warehouses, and exhibited few or no symptoms 
of commercial life." 

In this old town, where so much whispers of the past, 
of wild tales of witchcraft, and of legends of the sea, 
Nathaniel Hawthorne was born, July 4, 1804= The 
weird romancer may be said to have been almost indige- 
nous to its soil. In his introduction to The Scarlet Let- 
ter he wrote : 

" It is now nearly two centuries and a quarter since the original 
Briton, the earliest emigrant of my name, made his appearance in 
the wild and forest-bordered settlement, which has since become 
a city. . . . He was a soldier, legislator, judge ; he was a ruler in 
the church; he had all the Puritanic traits, both good and evil. 
He was likewise a bitter persecutor, as witness the Quakers, who 
have remembered him in their histories, and relate an incident of 
his hard severity toward a woman of their sect, which will last 
longer, it is to be feared, than any record of his better deeds, 
although these be many. His son too inherited the persecuting 
spirit, and made himself so conspicuous in the martyrdom of the 
witches, that their blood may fairjy be said to have left a stain 
upon him. . . . Planted deep, in the town's earliest infancy and 



242 AMERICAN LITERATURE. 

childhood, by these two earnest and energetic men, the race has 
ever since subsisted here ; always, too, in respectability ; never, so 
far as I have known, disgraced by a single unworthy member. 
. . . From father to son, for above a hundred years, they followed 
the sea; a gray-headed ship master, in each generation, retiring 
from the quarter deck to the homestead, while a boy of fourteen 
took the hereditary place before the mast, confronting the salt 
spray and the gale which had blustered against his sire and grand- 
sire. The boy, also, in due time, passed from the forecastle to the 
cabin, spent a tempestuous manhood, and returned from his world 
wanderings, to grow old and die, and mingle his dust with the 
native earth." 

Hawthorne's father, who followed the ancestral pro- 
fession, died in Surinam, South America, of yellow fever, 
in 1808. His death had a great influence on the son's 
career, for the mother immediately retired into the 
deepest seclusion. Shut out in a measure from the 
world, the sensitive boy became shy and diffident, a 
dreamer and a lover of solitude. 

" When I was nine or ten years old my mother took up her res- 
idence on the banks of Sebago Lake in Maine, where the family 
owned a large tract of land, and here I ran quite wild, and would 
I doubt not have willingly run wild till this time, fishing all day 
long, or shooting with an old fowling piece ; but reading a good 
deal, too, on the rainy days, especially in Shakespeare and The 
Pilgrim's Progress, and any poetry or light books within my reach. 
. . . But by and by my good mother began to think it was neces- 
sary for her boy to do something else ; so I was sent back to Salem 
where a prime instructor fitted me for college." — A utobio graphical 
Letter to R. H. Stoddard. 

By the aid of this instructor, who was Joseph Worces- 
ter, the author of the dictionary, Hawthorne was en- 
abled in 1821 to enter Bowdoin College. Strangely 
enough, the poet Longfellow was a member of the same 



NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE. 243 

class, while Franklin Pierce, afterwards to become Pres- 
ident of the United States, had entered the college one 
year before. Hawthorne's college life was uneventful. 
In general scholarship he did not rank high, probably 
because he was too shy to assert himself, yet he early 
acquired distinction as a master of English composition. 

"It was my fortune, or misfortune, just as you please, to have 
some slender means of supporting myself, and so, on leaving college 
in 1825, instead of immediately studying a profession, I sat down 
to consider what pursuit in life I was best fit for. My mother had 
now returned [to Salem] and taken up her abode in her deceased 
father's house, a tall, ugly, old, grayish building ... in which I 
had a room ; and year after year I kept on considering what I was 
fit for, and time and my destiny decided that I was to be the 
writer that I am. I had always a natural tendency . . . towards 
seclusion, and this I now indulged to the uttermost, so that for 
months together I scarcely held human intercourse outside of my 
own family, seldom going out except at twilight, or only to take 
the nearest way to the most convenient solitude, which was oftenest 
the sea-shore. ... I had very few acquaintances in Salem, and 
during the nine or ten years that I spent there in this solitary way, 
I doubt whether so much as twenty people in the town were aware 
of my existence." — Autobiographical Letter. 

It was during these lonely years that Hawthorne 
served his apprenticeship as a romancer. He wrote 
almost continuously, burning the greater part of his 
writing. Some of his tales and sketches, however, 
appeared from time to time in obscure newspapers and 
periodicals like The Salem Grazette, The New England 
Magazine, The Boston Token, and The Democratic He- 
view. It was this twelve years of solitude and hard 
work that made of Hawthorne the master that he after- 
wards became. (See American Note-Books, p. 222.) 



244 AMERICAN LITERATURE. 

1. Sketches and Tales. — Although Hawthorne had 
published, in 1828, Fanshawe, a crude romance which in 
after years he tried hard to suppress, his real literary 
life did not open until 1837, when he published the first 
Twice-Told series of the Twice-Told Tales, a collection 
Mosses from an °^ ms fugitive contributions to newspapers 
Old Manse. an( j ma g az i nes . Two years later, through 
image. the influence of Bancroft, he found employ- 

ment for a time in the Boston Custom House, and in 
1841 he joined the Brook Farm Community. He was 
not enthusiastic over his experience, as his note-books 
show. " I went to live in Arcady," he says in one place, 
"and found myself up to the chin in a barnyard." 

In 1842 Hawthorne was married to Miss Sophia 
Peabody of Salem. The union was an ideal one, 
exerting a powerful influence on his after life and char- 
acter. Full of happiness and dreams, they moved into 
the " Old Manse " at Concord. The literary result of 
the next three years was the Mosses from an Old Manse, 
a collection of sketches and tales after the same plan as 
the Twice-Told Tales. The Snow Image, which was pre- 
pared at Lenox five years later, completes the list of the 
tales and sketches. In its preface he wrote, " The pub- 
lic need not dread my again trespassing on its kindness 
with any more of these musty and mouse-nibbled leaves 
of old periodicals transformed, by the magic arts of my 
friendly publishers, into a new book. These are the 
last." When he bade adieu to the "Old Manse" in 
1846, to become surveyor in the Custom House in 
Salem, he closed the first period of his literary life. 



NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE. 245 

Hawthorne's tales and sketches may be divided into 
three groups : Allegories, Sketches, and Tales of New- 
England History and Tradition. In the words of Poe, 
"The strain of allegory completely overwhelms the 
greater number of his subjects, and in some measure 
interferes with the direct conduct of all." In such 
sketches as "David Swain," "The Hollow of Three 
Hills," "Dr. Heidigger's Experiment," and "Edward 
Fane's Rosebud," the characters are cold and lifeless, 
mere symbols used in the solution of some vague, fan- 
tastic problem of destiny. About these allegories there 
is little that is connected with the real, living world. 
Some are vague and even incomprehensible ; some are 
morbid and unwholesome ; " all are the work of a 
recluse who makes guesses at life from a knowledge of 
his own heart, acquired by a habit of introspection, but 
who has had little contact with men." Hawthorne, in 
the preface to Twice- Told Tales, has characterized with 
rare insight these early sketches : 

"They have the pale tint of flowers that blossomed in too 
retired a shade, — the coolness of a meditative habit which diffuses 
itself through the feeling and observation of every sketch. 
Instead of passion there is sentiment; and even in what purports 
to be pictures of actual life, we have allegory, not always so 
warmly dressed in its habiliments of flesh and blood as to be taken 
into the reader's mind without a shiver. . . . The book, if you 
would see anything in it, requires to be read in the clear, brown, 
twilight atmosphere in which it was written." 

At least one-third of Hawthorne's early work may be 
classed under the head of Sketches, — "pure essays," 
as Poe expressed it, — studies of external nature and 



246 AMERICAN LITERATURE. 

human nature from the standpoint of a solitary man. 
The observer is hidden from view, in a steeple, behind 
a window, under an umbrella, in the solitude of the 
fields or the ocean shore, — always secure from observa- 
tion, and from this vantage ground he describes his 
surroundings. " Sunday at Home," " Little Annie's 
Ramble," " The Town Pump," "Toll Gatherer's Day," 
" Snowflakes," "Footprints on the Sea-shore," "The 
Old Manse," " Main Street," and numbers of others, 
have few equals even in Irviog's collection. In sweet- 
ness and purity of style, faithfulness to nature, delicate 
humor and pathos, and simple descriptive power, they 
have no superior in American or even in English lit- 
erature. After reading his sketches and note-books, one 
needs not to be told that Hawthorne lived very close to 
Nature's heart. Many of the sketches are studies of 
human nature. In " Ethan Brand," " Wakefield," and 
many others,* we have minute analyses of the impulses 
and motives of the heart. 

Of real tales, written with narrative intent only, like 
the tales of Poe, Hawthorne wrote comparatively few. 
Among them may be mentioned " The Gray Champion," 
" The Legends of the Province House," " The Gentle 
Boy," and " Endicott and the Red Cross." 

All of Hawthorne's tales that are connected with the 
earth at all, have New England for their background. 
Many of the allegories, like " The Great Carbuncle," 
" The Great Stone Face," " The Minister's Black Veil," 
" The Ambitious Guest,'.' and " The May Pole of Merry 
Mount," are drawn from New England history or tra« 



NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE. 247 

dition. Hawthorne transfigured New England. He 
and Whittier did for it what Burns and Scott did 
for Scotland. See Professor Richardson's analysis of 
" Ethan Brand," American Literature, Vol. II., 349 ; 
Poe's review of Hawthorne's tales, Vol. VI. ; and Long- 
fellow's review of Twice-Told Tales. 

Suggestions for Study. — 1. Arrange in three classes all of 
Hawthorne's tales and sketches. 

2. Compare the story of "Endicott and the Red Cross," in 
Twice-Told Tales, with the same story in Grandfather's Chair. 

3. Find in " Endicott and the Red Cross " the germ of The 
Scarlet Letter. 

4. Find in the tales materials which are found in their original 
form in the note-books, as, for example, the story of the one-armed 
soap boiler in " Ethan Brand." 

Required Reading. — " The Hollow of Three Hills," "Ethan 
Brand," " Sights from a Steeple," " The Town Pump," " Night 
Sketches," "Wakefield," "Endicott and the Red Cross," "The 
Gentle Boy." 

2. Four Great Romances. — During the three years in 
the Custom House at Salem Hawthorne wrote very 
little, the routine of official business proving too dis- 
tracting for literary effort. But when, in 1849, through 
the coming into power of the Whigs, he was removed 
from his office, he immediately devoted all of his time 
and energies to a romance which had been shaping itself 
in his thoughts for several years. The Scarlet Letter, 
which appeared in 1850, at once made Hawthorne's 
literary fame secure. Its success was phenomenal, the 
first edition being exhausted in ten days. During the 
next year and a half Hawthorne resided at Lenox, 
Massachusetts, where he produced The Snow Image and 



248 AMERICAN LITERATURE. 

other Twice-Told Tales, and The House of the Seven 
Gables. He passed the winter of 1851-52 at West 
Newton, where he finished The Blithedale Romance. 
These years, between 1849 and 1852, were the period of 
Hawthorne's greatest literary activity, since during this 
time he produced three out of the four great romances 
upon which his fame chiefly rests. The Marble Faun, 
which appeared in 1860, completes the number. 

Required Reading. — "The Custom House," introductory to 

The Scarlet Letter. 

Of the four romances The Scarlet Letter stands at the 
head in intensity, subtle analysis of human passion, and 
The Scarlet minute dissection of the workings of guilty 
The House of human hearts. Its background and atmos- 
the Seven phere were taken with wonderful accuracy 

The Blithedale from early New England days ; its theme 

Romance. . „.-,■. rril 

The Marble 1S the blasting power of a single sin. The 
Scarlet Letter is, without doubt, the most 
artistic creation that America has given to literature. 

The House of the Seven Grables, while not so intense 
as The Scarlet Letter, is, nevertheless, a sombre story of 
sin and its punishment. Its background is old Salem ; 
its theme, in Hawthorne's own words, is how " the wrong- 
doing of one generation lives into the successive ones, 
and, divesting itself of every temporary advantage, 
becomes a pure and uncontrollable mischief." The 
romance has almost the three unities of the Greek 
drama. The time, although centuries are involved, is in 
reality but a few weeks ; the story only once leaves the 
venerable house of the seven gables and then it hastens 



NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE. 249 

back again "like an owl bewildered in the daylight and 
hastening back to its hollow tree " ; its action is the 
embodiment of unity. 

As little Pearl in The Scarlet Letter is Hawthorne's 
most imaginative creation, and as Phoebe in The House 
of the Seven Grables is his sweetest and most natural 
conception, so Zenobia in The Blithedale Romance is his 
most intense, vivid, and powerful character. The back- 
ground and atmosphere of The Blithedale Romance were 
drawn with accuracy from the author's recollections 
and notes of his Brook Farm experience, which he 
declared to be the most romantic episode of his life. 
The characters were, without doubt, imaginary ; for while 
freely admitting the resemblance, Hawthorne emphati- 
cally denied having made in Zenobia a study of 
Margaret Fuller. The theme of the romance, in its 
author's own words, is " that the whole universe, . . . 
and Providence or Destiny to boot, make common cause 
against the woman who swerves one hair's-breadth out 
of the beaten track." The Marble Faun, Hawthorne's 
longest romance, is the only one of his creations that 
has a foreign background and atmosphere. Its theme 
is the transforming power of a single sin. The romance 
is more mystical and vague than the others ; the charac- 
ters, in the words of Motley, are " shadowy, weird, fan- 
tastic, Hawthornesque shapes, flitting through the golden 
gloom which is the atmosphere of the book " ; the narra- 
tive is often delayed by long descriptions of Italian scen- 
ery and life, and yet the romance is in many respects 
the maturest and richest of Hawthorne's creations. 



250 AMERICAN LITERATURE. 

These four great romances mark the. highest flight of 
imaginative genius in America. In their construction 
Hawthorne followed no models. Judged by the stand- 
ards usually applied to the romance, they are singularly 
defective. They are almost wholly without plot; they 
contain little incident; and they deal with few charac- 
ters. Their interest depends almost wholly upon their 
minute analysis of the workings and motives of the 
human heart. Each romance is woven of four, or at the 
most five, characters, a vague, romantic background, and 
a great moral or psychological truth. All of them are 
more or less allegorical. "Every gable of the seven 
gables, every room in the house, every burdock growing 
rankly before the door, has a symbolical significance." 
Bulwer-Lytton declared that " In ' Transformation ' (The 
Marble Faun) by Mr. Hawthorne, the mere story of 
outward incident can never be properly understood 
unless the reader's mind goes along with the exquisite 
mysticism which is symbolized by the characters. In 
that work, often very faulty in the execution,' exceed- 
ingly grand in the conception, are typified the classical, 
sensuous life, through Donato ; the Jewish dispensation, 
through Miriam; the Christian dispensation, through 
Hilda, who looks over the ruins of Rome from her vir- 
gin chamber amidst the doves." 

« Hawthorne wove a romance as a mathematician solves 
a problem. Given, as he expressed it, " the self-concen- 
trated philanthropist ; the high-spirited woman bruising 
herself against the narrow limitations of her sex ; the 
weakly maiden, whose tremulous nerves endow her with 



NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE. 251 

sibylline attributes; the minor poet, beginning life 
with strenuous aspirations which die out with his 
youthful fervor " ; place them together in a phalanstery 
remote from the rest of the world and what will be the 
result ? How will the mutual attractions and repulsions, 
the diversity of temperaments and ideals end ? Who 
shall say that the denouement of The Blithedale Ro- 
mance is not the only possible one ? For the romancer 
knows every secret, watches every pulsation of the 
souls of his characters, and works them into the equa- 
tion. The reader must accept the result as the author 
did, even though it clash with his sympathies, as we 
know it often did with the author's. 

Required Reading. — The House of the Seven Gables, The 
Marble Faun. 

3. Stories for Children. — In 1836, Hawthorne had 
left for four months his solitude in Salem to edit for 
S. C. Goodrich a juvenile periodical in Boston. This 
experience, short as it was, was a valuable one ; for it 
revealed to Hawthorne his powers as a writer for chil- 
dren. His note-books from this period begin to contain 
the germs of juvenile sketches and stories. Shortly 
after publishing Twice-Told Tales, he made his first 
real venture in this difficult field with The Whole His- 
tory of Grandfather' 's Chair, a most delightful crea- 
tion, which tells the early history of New England in 
a series of well-chosen episodes. A Wonder Book, for 
Girls and Boys, written at Lenox directly after the 
publication of The House of the Seven Gables, was 
Hawthorne's next venture. Its success was so imme- 



252 AMERICAN LITERATURE. 

diate and remarkable that, in 1858, while residing in 
Concord at "The Wayside," a home that he had pur- 
chased the previous year, he wrote Tanglewood Tales, 
a Second Wonder Book. Ten days after its comple- 
tion his appointment by President Pierce to the con- 
sulate at Liverpool was confirmed by the United States 
Senate. 

Required Reading. — "The Wayside," introductory to Tan- 
glewood Tales ; " Consular Experiences " in Our Old Home. 

Hawthorne's great interest in child life is shown 
throughout all his writings. He was in thorough sym- 
Grand/ather's pathy with childhood, and understood thor- 

°^' oughly its limitations and capabilities. The 

Book. task which he imposed upon himself was 

Tanglewood 

Tales. no easy one. lo write a book that will 

T f^m 8 BUtl S ry interest children, that will not be "written 
and Biography, downward," or, on the other hand, "be ar- 
tificial or complex," is an accomplishment that few have 
acquired. It was Hawthorne's belief that " children pos- 
sess an unestimated sensibility to whatever is deep or 
high in imagination or feeling, so long as it is simple 
likewise." His selection of the old Grecian myths, as 
material for child lore, was a bold and characteristic 
one. "These old legends," he asked, "some of them 
so hideous, others so melancholy and miserable, amid 
which the Greek tragedians sought their themes and 
moulded them into the sternest forms of grief that ever 
the world saw, was such material the stuff that chil- 
dren's playthings should be made of ? " It was, indeed, 
a natural question. But beneath the magic of Haw- 



NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE. 253 

thorne's touch everything objectional disappeared. 
" They fall away," as he himself explained it, " and 
are thought of no more the instant he puts his imag- 
ination in sympathy with the innocent little circle 
whose wide-open eyes are fixed so eagerly upon him. 
The stories transform themselves and reassume the 
shapes which they might be supposed to possess in 
the pure childhood of the world." Hawthorne recre- 
ated the Grecian nrythology. His wonder books are 
a real addition to the world's literature of childhood, 
ranking with such classics as Grimm's and with Ander- 
sen's Fairy Tales, and with Lamb's Tales from Shake- 
speare. E. P. Whipple declared that " Hawthorne never 
pleases grown people so much as when he writes with 
an eye to the enjoyment of little people." There are 
few that will not agree heartily with Hawthorne's dec- 
laration that he " never did anything so good as those 
old baby-stories." 

Required Reading. — The Wonder Book. 

4. Fragmentary and Unfinished Work. — Hawthorne 
was in Europe seven years, — four years as consul at 
Liverpool, and three years in France, Italy, and vari- 
ous parts of England. In 1860, he published in Lon- 
don, under the title Transformation, The Marble Faun, 
which he had written in Italy and revised at Redcar, 
England. The same year, with eager anticipation, he 
returned to America to spend his declining years at the 
Wayside in Concord. But he was destined to produce 
only one more complete book, Our Old Home, a volume 



254 AMERICAN LITERATURE. 

compiled in 1862 from his English note-books. His 
health was sadly shattered from some mysterious dis- 
ease that baffled the skill of physicians. He attempted 
at least three romances, all of which he left unfinished. 
Hoping to stay his fast-ebbing energies, in the spring of 
1864 he started with his lifelong friend, ex-President 
Pierce, on a carriage drive through the White Moun- 
tains. A few days later, on May 19, the sad word came 
from Plymouth, New Hampshire, where they had been 
stopping for the night, that Hawthorne had suddenly 
passed away. 

At the funeral the half-finished manuscript of his 
last romance was laid upon his coffin, rendering deeply 
significant the noble lines read by Longfellow : 

" Ah ! who shall lift again that wand of magic power 
And the lost clew regain? 
The unfinished window in Aladdin's tower 
Unfinished must remain." 

Since Hawthorne's death his unfinished romances and 
many extracts from his note-books, % which he had kept 
r oidH with extreme care from day to day through- 
American, out the greater part of his life, have been 

English, . & , , r¥ , 1 

French, and given to the world. These volumes, al- 
Books. though of a fragmentary nature, — a store- 

Romanc™ 67, house of descriptions, plots for romances, 
Septimius characterizations of peculiar personalities, 

Dr.Grimshaw's written to be drawn from for his more 
ambitious literary efforts, — are of untold 
value to the student of Hawthorne's life and philosophy. 
The fragments of romances produced in his last years, 



NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE. 255 

while full of melancholy evidence of failing powers, con- 
tain here and there some of his strongest work. In 
these fragments we find work in every stage of develop- 
ment. These and the note-books admit us into the 
romancer's literary workshop. 

The note-books, in connection with the autobio- 
graphical chapters of the romances and tales published 
during Hawthorne's lifetime, give us as complete a 
picture of the romancer as we shall ever have. No one 
can ever reveal him to the world any more vividly than 
he has chosen to reveal himself. Well might he enjoin 
upon his family to publish no biography, for he had been 
his own Bos well. 

Hawthorne's Style. — (Richardson, II. ; Whipple's 
Literature and Life, American Literature; Welsh's 
English Literature and Language, II. ; Leslie Stephen's 
Hours in a Library ; Taylor's Essays and Notes ; Hig- 
ginson's Short Studies of American Authors ; Curtis' 
Literary and Social Essays ; Hutton's Essays in Liter- 
ary Criticism; Lathrop's Study of Hawthorne; Julian 
Hawthorne's " Hawthorne's Philosophy," Century Maga- 
zine, May, 1886.) As a writer of strong, idiomatic, 
musical English, Hawthorne must be ranked with the 
great masters of the brightest age of English literature. 
He stands as a perpetual rebuke to those who insist that 
perfect English is a lost art. His style has not a hint 
of artificiality, not a suggestion of painstaking revision, 
or of slavery to the lifeless rules of rhetoric. It seems 
as natural and spontaneous as a talk by the fireside with 
a friend, and yet the reader looks in vain for a single 



256 AMERICAN LITERATURE. 

careless or slovenly sentence, one that is not of crystal 
clearness and limpid sweetness. A delicate humor, 
which, like all true humor, is very close to pathos, 
plays over every page. There is not a prose writer of 
the century upon whose work one would be more willing 
to stake the reputation of our stout old English tongue. 

" Wherein this excellence in Hawthorne's style consists it is not 
easy to say ; the charm is too airy and impalpable for the grasp of 
language. It is to be described by negatives rather than positives ; 
his style is not stiff, not pedantic ; it is free from mannerism, cari- 
cature, and rhetoric ; it has a sap and flavor of its own ; it is a 
peculiar combination of ease and finish. The magic of style is 
like the magic of manner, it is felt by all, but it can be analyzed 
and defined by few. . . . Hawthorne never was, could not be, a 
careless writer. By an inevitable law of his mind, every concep- 
tion to which his pen gave shape was graceful and exact. . . . 
Before his exquisite sentences verbal criticism folds its hands for 
lack of argument." — G. S. Hillard. 



XIX. 

THE CAMBRIDGE POETS (1). 

Old Cambridge. — No history of American litera- 
ture can be complete that fails to mention the great 
service done by Harvard College in introducing to the 
American people the culture and the art of Europe. 
For more than half a century Cambridge was our 
literary port of entry, our distributing centre, our 
literary capital. 

In 1818 Washington Allston, our first evangelist of 
culture, came back from his long sojourn in the art 
galleries of Europe, a member of the Royal Academy, 
to spend his last years in Boston and Cambridgeport. 
His studio became the art centre of America, an en- 
chanted spot amid the wilds of the New World, where, 
in the words of Lowell, " one might go to breathe 
Venetian air and, better yet, the very spirit wherein the 
elder brothers of art labored." In 1819 Edward Everett, 
" the best Grecian " of his generation, returned from 
Germany and Greece to take the chair of Greek at 
Harvard, and to inspire with his own boundless enthu- 
siasm all who came in contact with him. Four years 
later Charming told to eager audiences of the treasures 
of literature and art in the European capitals. Through 
the efforts of the Harvard scholars, the Greek language 

s 257 



258 AMERICAN LITERATURE. 

and literature soon began to emerge from the obscurity 
into which they had been thrown by Mather and Barlow. 
In 1830 Felton edited Homer, and shortly afterwards 
Isocrates and iEschylus. Under the influence of Buck- 
minster, Felton, Riple3 r , Emerson, and others, the German 
literature and philosophy began to be better known. In 
1838 Ripley published the first two volumes of his 
Foreign Standard Literature, a series soon to be ex- 
panded into fourteen volumes ; two years later Felton 
translated Mentzel's Grerman Literature, and in 1848 
Dr. Hedge, German professor at Harvard, published his 
valuable Prose Writers of Germany. The effect upon 
American thought and literature of the influx of 
German philosophy has been already noted. 

But the American people as a whole knew little of Con- 
tinental literature until Longfellow " opened the sluices 
through which the flood of German sentimental poetry 
poured into the United States." Longfellow's early 
translations from the Spanish, the French, and the 
German, and his Hyperion, which is full of the intoxi- 
cating Rhine wine, mark an epoch in the history of 
American poetry. He did for Germany and the Conti- 
nent of Europe what Irving had done for England. 
Full freighted as he was with all that was purest and 
best in the Old World culture, and uniting with this 
a rare sympathy and a sweetly gentle spirit, he com- 
manded from the very first an audience of his country- 
men such as no American had ever won before or will 
ever win again. With the appearance of Longfellow 
and the remarkable group that soon gathered about 



THE CAMBRIDGE POETS. 259 

him, the influence of Cambridge on our literature 
reached its highest point. Until the day of Long- 
fellow's death Cambridge was the literary centre of 
America, and the house of the gentle poet the focal 
point of cis-Atlantic poetry. 

Suggested Reading. — Lowell's "Cambridge Thirty Years 
Ago," and Holmes' " Old Cambridge." 

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807-1882). 

"The poet of hope, home, and history." — Butterworth. 

" I think that the poet himself, reading his own sweet songs, felt the 
apostolic nature of his mission, — that it was religious, in the etymo- 
logical sense of the word, the binding back of America to the Old 
World taste and imagination. Our true rise in poetry may be dated 
from Longfellow's method of exciting an interest in it." — Stedman. 

Life. — (The standard life of the poet is the Rev. 
Samuel Longfellow's Life of Henry Wadsworth Long- 
fellow, two volumes, which, with the same author's 
Final Memorials, gives a wonderfully complete and 
accurate picture of Longfellow and his friends. Con- 
sult also G. L. Austin's Life, which has considerable 
value ; also W. S. Kennedy's " scrap book," entitled, 
H W. Longfellow : Biography, Anecdote, Letters, Criti- 
cism; F. H. Underwood's appreciative study of Long- 
fellow, and E. S. Robertson's Life in the Great Writers 
Series. For a complete bibliography of the poet's works 
see Kennedy's Life, and also Monthly Reference Lists of 
the Providence Public Library for February, 1882. 
R. H. Stoddard's Homes and Haunts of our [six] Elder 
Poets, and Tributes to Longfellow and Emerson by the 



260 AMERICAN LITERATURE. 

Massachusetts Historical Society, are very helpful and 
interesting. Garnet's Studies in Longfellow is well-nigh 
indispensable as a guide to an intelligent classroom 
study of the poet's work.) 

It is a curious fact that the soul and centre of the Cam- 
bridge group of scholars and poets was not a native of 
Cambridge nor even an alumnus of Harvard College. 
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow was born in Portland, 
Maine, at a time when that now flourishing city was but a 
forest-bound hamlet. Like Dana and Bryant and Holmes, 
he inherited some of the best blood of New England, 
being able, on his mother's side, to trace his lineage back 
to John Alden and Priscilla of early Puritan fame. The 
Longfellows also were of a sturdy yeoman stock. The 
poet's great-grandfather was a village blacksmith in 
Portland, who by hard toil and strict economy had 
managed to send one of his ten children to Harvard 
College; while the poet's father, a son of this earliest 
scholar of the family, himself a Harvard graduate, was 
a leading lawyer in Portland and at one time a mem- 
ber of Congress. Henry Wadsworth, the culminating 
flower of the Longfellow family, was born Feb. 27, 
1807. His early life was a most happy one. He was 
surrounded by books and an atmosphere of culture and 
refinement ; he was given every educational advantage 
that his native town could afford, and in his fourteenth 
year he was sent, fully prepared, to Bowdoin College, 
where he became a member of the famous class of 1825. 

Required Reading. — " My Lost Youth," and " Parker Cleave- 
land." 



THE CAMBRIDGE POETS. 261 

For a time after his graduation Longfellow was un- 
settled as to his future. Even during his college days 
he had turned his eyes anxiously toward the unknown 
into which he was soon to go. Golden visions of a 
literary life even then were beginning to flit before him, 
but his practical father had given little encouragement. 
In 1824 he had written to his son : " A literary life, 
to one who has the means of support, must be very 
pleasant, but there is not enough wealth in this country 
to afford encouragement and patronage to merely liter- 
ary men." 

The literary outlook in those days was indeed a dis- 
couraging one. While in college Longfellow had read 
with intense enjoyment The Sketch Book, then in its 
first edition, and he had written in his diary shortly 
afterwards that another novel, The Pilot, by the author 
of The Spy, was out. But these books, together with 
Bryant's early poems, represented almost the sum total 
of American literature worthy of the name. The future 
seemed dark and forbidding even as seen through the 
eyes of a youthful poet, and so, with a sigh of regret, 
Longfellow gave up his dream and resigned himself 
to the study of his father's and grandfather's profession. 
But during the autumn following his graduation from 
college, there came an event that changed the whole 
current of his life. His alma mater, with rare judgment 
and a far-sightedness that seems most remarkable, offered 
to him before he had completed his nineteenth year her 
newly founded chair of modern languages, and Long- 
fellow, eagerly accepting the offer, spent the next three 



262 AMERICAN LITERATURE. 

years in preliminary study in France, Spain, Italy, and 
Germany. 

" Outre Mer," the title of Longfellow's first original 
work, may be taken as the motto which dominated his 
early literary life. The poet's first impulse and inspira- 
tion came from "beyond the sea." Outre Mer is a 
picture of romantic Europe, — Europe as seen by the 
fresh, joyous eyes of a thoroughly healthy, happy, poetic ' 
youth, whose life had been confined to a dull provincial 
village and to the unromantic halls of a frontier college, j 
The book fairly effervesces with its author's boundless | 
sense of freedom, his irrepressible spirits, and his boyish 
enjoyment. Longfellow approached the Continent as 
Irving had approached old England, — almost with 
reverence. Outre Mer was another Sketch Book, — 
every reviewer of the early editions made mention of 
this fact. Longfellow did not deny the source of his 
inspiration. " I also am writing a book," he wrote from 
Gottingen in 1829, " a kind of Sketch Book of scenes in 
France, Spain, and Italy." The same charm, the same 
crystal clearness of expression, the same joyous style, 
the same "melancholy tenderness and atmosphere of 
reverie," is in each, and yet Outre Mer is as distinctively 
Longfellow's as The Sketch Book is Irving's. 

In 1839 Longfellow published his second prose work, 
Hyperion. The four years since the publication of Outre 
Mer had been eventful ones. He had been called after 
five years at Bowdoin, to Harvard, to the important chair 
of modern languages just vacated by the scholarly 
George Ticknor, the historian of Spanish literature ; 



THE CAMBRIDGE POETS. 263 

he had journeyed a second time to Europe, and in 
Rotterdam he had met with the first great sorrow of 
his life in the death of his young wife ; and after two 
years of intense study, he had returned to commence 
his work at Harvard. Hyperion is another Sketch Book, 
but it is richer, more vigorous, more matured than Outre 
Mer. The atmosphere is Switzerland and Germany, — 
the Germany of Uhland and of Heine. Wild legends 
of the Rhine, translations of German lyrics, fragments 
of criticism, and bits of scenery and travel are strung 
upon a slender thread of story, and all is tinted with the 
vague, mellow hues of the German " Mahrchenwelt." 
The book has an autobiographic value. It is no secret 
that the hero, Paul Fleming, was Longfellow himself, 
and that the heroine was Miss Frances Appleton, who 
afterwards became his wife. " He met her," says his bi- 
ographer, "in Switzerland, had travelled with her a fort- 
night there, and had renewed the acquaintance when the 
family returned to Boston in 1837. The portrait, the 
feelings recorded in the story, are undoubtedly true.> 
The incidents are imaginary. Into this romance the 
author put the glow, the fervor, the fever, of his heart." 
Hyperion, while not a great book, was nevertheless 
an epoch-making one. Like Irving's Sketch Book and 
Alhambra, it opened up to Americans a new world. It 
is a book for youth, to whom it brings revelations and 
visions, and America at the time of its first publication 
was in its youth. It opened the splendid vista of Conti- 
nental beauty and romance and it brought a new longing 
into a thousand American homes. Voices of the Night 



264 AMERICAN LITERATURE. 

(1839), Longfellow's first volume of poems, was in the 
same key. The translations were mostly from the Ger- 
man and the nine original poems are full of the " sadness 
and longing " of the Old World singers. The romantic 
melancholy, the gorgeous imagery, the sweet, lilting 
measures, the noble appeals to courage and hope, all 
struck home to the popular heart, and into thousands of 
other American homes came the first ray of beauty, the 
first longing for brighter things. 

Required Reading. — Hyperion; Voices of the Night. 

Ballads and Heart Poems. — During the period between 
the publication of Voices of the Night and Evangeline, 
Longfellow wrote his most popular ballads and lyrics. 
His second book of poems, Ballads and Other Poems 
(1841), which immediately indicated his true place in 
the poetic world, contained such well-known favorites 
as " The Skeleton in Armor," " The Wreck of the Hes- 
perus," " The Village Blacksmith," " The Rainy Day," 
"Maidenhood," and "Excelsior"; while The Belfry 
of Bruges (1845) added to these "The Day is Done," 
" The Old Clock on the Stairs," and " The Arrow and 
the Song." 

As a ballad writer Longfellow has had few superiors 
among American poets. The requisites of the ballad 
are most exacting. It must tell a simple tale from one 
point of view, rush at once to the story and end as sud- 
denly. It must be short, concise, rapid, and every word 
must count. " The Wreck of the Hesperus " and " The 
Skeleton in Armor" stand at the head of Longfellow's 



THE CAMBRIDGE POETS. 265 

ballads. The latter is full of the true Viking dash and 
fire. He must indeed be devoid of poetic feeling who 
is not thrilled by the grand crescendo 

" As with his wings aslant, 
Sails the fierce cormorant, 
Seeking some rocky haunt, 

With his prey laden, 
So toward the open main, 
Beating to sea again, 
Through the wild hurricane, 

Bore I the maiden." 

But it is as the poet of the heart and the home that 
Longfellow is most widely known. He has touched all 
the chords of those experiences which are common to 
mankind, — the aspirations and the nameless melancholy 
of youth ; the dream of love ; the endearments of home ; 
the fierce battle of manhood; the visit of death; the 
vacant chair ; the sunny memories of age. In thousands 
of American homes Longfellow is the only poet. 
He has comforted thousands of sorrowing hearts and 
pointed thousands to the star of hope. He has made 
the title " poet " a holy one, and forever silenced those 
materialistic souls who contend that verse writers have 
no mission among men. 

Required Reading. — The nine poems mentioned above. 

The twelve years following the publication of The 
Belfry of Bruges (1845) was the period of Longfellow's 
greatest literary activity. In the following year he pub- 
lished Evangeline, by many considered his master work ; 
in 1849 appeared his third prose work, Kavanagh, a 



266 AMERICAN LITERATURE. 

novel of New England village life. The Seaside and 
Fireside (1850) contained the well-known poem, " The 
Building of the Ship." One year later he completed 
The Golden Legend, a mediaeval romance of the Rhine, 
which he afterwards incorporated into his long work, 
Christus. In 1854 he resigned his professor's chair at 
Harvard to devote his whole time to literary work. One 
year later he published Hiawatha and in 1858 he com- 
pleted his second long poem in hexameter verse, The 
Courtship of Miles Standish. 

Evangeline. — (For the history of Acadie see Ban- 
croft, 1883 edition, II., 425, and Parkman's Montcalm 
and Wolfe. See also Warner's Baddeck. For a treat- 
ment of the English hexameter see Arnold's On Trans- 
lating Homer, and Stedman, VI., 4.) This beautiful 
poem, which is called by Stedman "the flower of 
American idyls " and by Ho wells " the best poem of our 
age," is founded upon one of the most pathetic inci- 
dents in American history, — the expulsion by the 
English of the French settlers in Nova Scotia in 1775. 
Longfellow used for the poem a metre which had been 
but seldom used in English literature, — the old hexam- 
eter of Homer and Virgil. As a result, few poems in 
American literature have been more criticised. Poe, 
who delighted to pose as a metrical expert, assailed it 
without mercy. (For Lowell's opinion see the Fable 
for Critics.') It seems to be the opinion generally of 
critics, that the real classic hexameter cannot be repro- 
duced in English. The language is too harsh and un- 
bending, and the quantity of English syllables depends 



THE CAMBRIDGE POETS. 267 

upon accent and is not unchangeable, as is the case with 
the Greek. There is much to criticise in Longfellow's 
hexameters. He ignored the spondees which add such 
a peculiar charm to the Greek and Latin epics ; he 
sometimes wrenched words violently to bring them to 
his use ; he has many faulty lines that are not even 
good prose. There is a fatal facility about the metre 
that is very liable to make the poem written in it mo- 
notonous, " sounding," as one critic has said, " like hoof- 
beats on a muddy road." But notwithstanding these 
criticisms, all must admit that to change the metre of 
Evangeline would be to rob it of much of its beauty. It 
has a sweet lilting movement very pleasing to the popular 
ear and it is peculiarly fitted to the sentimental, melan- 
choly atmosphere of the poem. There are lines in it 
that lose nothing when compared with the best of the 
classical hexameters. The twenty-three lines describ- 
ing the burning of Grand Pre, commencing " Suddenly 
arose from the south," while not perfect metrically, are 
nevertheless Homeric in their grandeur. 

Suggestions for Study. — For the story of the Arcadians 
charmingly told read Grandfather's Chair, II., 8. Read metrically 
a few pages of the poem pointing out particularly faulty lines, as 
e.g., 11. 82, 150, etc. Point out strikingly sonorous lines, as e.g., 
11. 793-797. Notice the two parts of each line. See if the cse- 
sural pause comes always in the same place. What predominates 
in the poem, character sketching, nature study, or dramatic inci- 
dent ? Could the poem be called a panorama of beautiful pict- 
ures ? How many different classes of men are described ? Make 
a list. Is Evangeline sharply characterized as are some of the 
great heroines of tragedy ? Can we paint a clear mental picture 
of her from the data given from Longfellow ? Find all the lines 



268 AMERICAN LITERATURE. 

in the poem that describe her in any way. Notice the variety of 
scenery described, — Canadian forests, southern bayous by moon- 
light, prairies, and great American rivers. Trace upon a map the 
journeys of Evangeline as far as revealed by the poem. What 
variety of natural scenery does Longfellow seem to prefer? Com- 
pare 11. 148-170 with the Indian Summer poems of Bryant and Whit- 
tier. Compare 11. 114-133 with Longfellow's " Village Blacksmith." 
Compare 11. 171-267 with Snow Bound and " The Cotter's Saturday 
Night." Notice Longfellow's constant use of analogy, as in 1. 454. 
Find other examples. How might 11. 1125-1165 suggest that the 
idea of Hiawatha was already in Longfellow's mind ? 

Hiawatha. — " This Indian Edda — if I may so call it — is founded 
on a tradition prevalent among the North American Indians, of a 
personage of miraculous birth, who was sent among them to clear 
their rivers, forests, and fishing grounds, and to teach them the arts 
of peace. He was known among different tribes by several names. 
. . . Mr. Schoolcraft gives an account of him in his Algic Re- 
searches, Vol. I., p. 134; and in his History, Condition, and Pros- 
pects of the Indian Tribes of the United States, III., p. 314, may be 
found the Iroquois form of the tradition, derived from the verbal 
narratives of an Onondaga chief. Into this old tradition, I have 
woven other curious Indian legends drawn chiefly from the various 
and valuable writings of Mr. Schoolcraft, to whom the literary 
world is greatly indebted for his indefatigable zeal in rescuing 
from oblivion so much of the legendary lore of the Indians. The 
scene of the poem is among the Ojibways on the southern shore 
of Lake Superior, in the region between the Pictured Rocks and 
the Grand Sable." — From the Author's Preface. 

Hiawatha is, without doubt, the most original con- 
tribution that Longfellow made to our literature. Many 
critics have joined with O. B. Frothingham and Anthony 
Trollope, the English novelist, in declaring it the " poet's 
masterpiece." Professor Richardson calls it " our near- 
est approach to an American Epic." It has certainly 
caught, as no other poem has, the spirit of the forest ; 
the fantastic mythology of a fast-fading race ; the 



THE CAMBRIDGE POETS. 269 

" Legends and traditions, 
With the odors of the forest, 
With the dew and damp of meadows, 
With the curling smoke of wigwams, 
With the rushing of great rivers." 

In Hiawatha Longfellow again introduced to English 
readers a new metre, — the eight-syllabled trochaic meas- 
ure of the Finnish epic poem, The Kalevala. " This 
monotonous time beat " seems particularly fitted for the 
primitive, aboriginal legends of Hiawatha, with their 
strange, uncouth nomenclature and "their frequent 
repetitions." Longfellow is unquestionably the only 
poet who has succeeded in extracting any real poetry 
from the Indian. 

Required Reading. — Hiawatha, Chs. III., VII., X., XV., XX. 

The Poet of American History. — Although Long- 
fellow has been called " the least national of our poets," 
one English critic even declaring that of all our singers 
Longfellow would have been the last he should have 
guessed to be an American had he " come across his 
works in ignorance of the fact," it is nevertheless true 
that no other poet, save Whittier perhaps, has done so 
much to make poetic our American history and tradi- 
tion. "But few of our associates," said Dr. Ellis before 
the Massachusetts Historical Society, " can have studied 
our local and even national history more sedulously than 
did Mr. Longfellow. He took the saddest of our New 
England tragedies and the sweetest of its rural home 
scenes, the wayside inn, the alarum of war, the Indian 
legend, and the hanging of the crane in the modest 



270 AMERICAN LITERATURE. 

household, and his genius has invested them with en- 
during charms and morals." 

Of early Puritan life he has given us the brighter 
side in The Courtship of Miles Standish, and the darker 
aspects in the New England Tragedies. He has given 
us in "Elizabeth" a charming picture of Quaker life 
and love, and in "Paul Revere's Ride" the most spirited 
ballad that has been inspired by the Revolution. " The 
Baron of St. Castine," " The Rhyme of Sir Christo- 
pher," "Eliot's Oak," "Lady Wentworth," and "The 
Ballad of the French Fleet" are but a few of the other 
lyrics that have added a new charm to our early history. 
As the poet of the American "seaside and fireside," 
Longfellow has again rendered his native land a price- 
less service. He is more and more coming to be recog- 
nized as the poet of our northern ocean. "The Building 
of the Ship," with its magnificent ending, is without a 
parallel, in its line, in English literature ; while such 
poems as " Seaweed," " The Lighthouse," and " The 
Fire of Driftwood " are redolent with odors of the vast 
ocean. 

Suggestions for Study. — Make a list of Longfellow's poems 
of American history and tradition, arranging them chronologically. 
What proportion are they of his poetic work ? Why should the 
story of John Alden and Priscilla have had a peculiar charm for 
Longfellow? Compare "John Endicott" with Whittier's "Cas- 
sandra Southwick," " The King's Missive," and his other poems of 
Quaker persecution. Compare "Giles Corey" with Whittier's 
" Witch's Daughter " and his other poems of witchcraft. Find all 
of Longfellow's Indian poems. How do they compare with sim- 
ilar works of Bryant and Whittier? Find Longfellow's anti- 
slavery poems. Do they deserve the criticism that the poet's 



THE CAMBRIDGE POETS. 271 

"very anger was gentle "? Compare them with Whittier's. Make 
a list of the poems of the sea, and of the poems of home and fireside. 
How many of Longfellow's poems are written in hexameters ? 

Longfellow's Last Years were eventless. His life had 
been again saddened, in 1861, when his wife was burned 
to death by the upsetting of a candle upon her dress, 
but no murmur escaped his lips or embittered his sweet 
songs. Year after year went by, marked by the appear- 
ance of new poems and new volumes. In 1863 he pub- 
lished The Tales of a Wayside Inn, a series of ballads 
and lyrics bound together, like the Canterbury Tales, by 
a thread of story. In 1860 he completed his translation 
of Dante's Divine Comedy, a work that at once took 
a place beside the great translations of the century. 
With the aid of Lowell and other eminent scholars, 
Longfellow had studied critically every line of the great 
poem and the resulting translation is as perfect as 
scholarship and care can make it. The long poem 
Christus was completed in 1872. In 1875, he read, at 
the fiftieth anniversary of his class at Bowdoin, the 
noble poem Morituri Salutamus, which stands as a 
fitting crown to a long life devoted almost wholly to 
song. The Hanging of the Crane (1874), The Masque 
of Pandora (1875), Keramos (1878), Ultima Thule, 
(1880), and the posthumous tragedy Michael Angelo, 
completed the poet's life-work. 

No American has been more universally beloved than 
Longfellow. When he died in Cambridge, March 24, 
1882, there was mourning throughout the whole land. 
All felt as if they had lost a near and dear friend. His 



272 AMERICAN LITERATURE. 

last written words, penned but a few days before his 
death, were in accord with his whole life : 

u Out of the shadow of night 
The world moves into light ; 
It is daybreak everywhere." 

He is the only American save Lowell who has been 
given a monument in Westminster Abbey, where Eng- 
land buries her honored dead. Only a few others of for- 
eign birth are commemorated within those sacred walls, 
the chief of these being the German composer, Handel. 

Longfellow's Place in Literature. — (Stedman, Ch. 
VI.; Richardson, II. ; Whipple's Essays and Reviews, I., 
59; Whittier's Literary Recreations ; Scudder's Men and 
Letters; Curtis' Literary and Social Essays.) Long- 
fellow was not the singer of fierce and violent pas- 
sion, nor of the profounder depths of tragedy; he was 
not a Shakespeare nor a Milton ; he was not profound 
like Emerson, nor intensely individual like Poe ; he was 
not strikingly original like Whittier, nor grand and ele- 
mental like Bryant. He was a singer in all keys. He 
understood all the stops in the great organ and struck 
all of its chords. As a craftsman he has had few equals 
among those who have used our language. His intimate 
acquaintance with the literatures of all lands, his 
thorough culture, "his keen appreciation of the beauty 
and power of art," made him an artist in the most deli- 
cate sense of the word. His sense of melody was well- 
nigh faultless. Whitman, who viewed poetry from a 
unique standpoint, complained that Longfellow had "an 
idiocrasy, almost a sickness of verbal melody." 



THE CAMBRIDGE POETS. 273 

The genial, loving, kindly nature of the poet shines 
from all his work. He was universal in his sympathies ; 
his poetry is " the gospel of good-will set to music." 
So, while Longfellow can never be ranked among the 
great poets who have brought burning messages to men, 
he will ever remain the most popular of poets, the one 
whose sweet sympathy has dried the tears of thousands. 
" His song was a household service, the ritual of our 
feastings and mournings ; and often it rehearsed for us 
the tales of many lands, or, best of all, the legends of 
our own." 



XX. 

THE CAMBRIDGE POETS (2). 

Oliver Wendell Holmes (1809-1894). 

' 'Dr. Holmes bore much the same relation to Boston that Dr. 
Johnson did to London." — C. F. Johnson. 

"The most concise, apt, and effective poet of the school of Pope 
this country has ever produced. ' ' — Tuckerman. 

' ' Who else wears so many crowns as he — the irresistible humorist 
and wit ; the liberal, bold, profound, and subtle thinker ; the poet, the 
essayist, the novelist ; the man of science ; the consummate teacher ; 
the skilful physician ; the unselfish patriot ; the honest, faithful, 
tender friend ? " — Professor Young. 

Life (by W. S. Kennedy and by E. E. Brown. The 
final and authorized life of Holmes is now, 1895, being 
prepared by John T. Morse, Jr.). Few men have made 
so complete a revelation of their lives and inner selves 
as has Oliver Wendell Holmes. He was "his own 
Boswell." Almost everything that he wrote has an 
autobiographic value. The student who reads care- 
fully the thirteen volumes of his works has gained as 
perfect a mental picture of the genial autocrat as can be 
conveyed by mere words. All biographies of Holmes 
are well-nigh valueless in the presence of his own auto- 
biographical work. 

274 



THE CAMBRIDGE POETS. 275 

AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL READINGS FROM HOLMES. 
(References are to the Riverside Edition, 1892.) 

1. Glimpses of Old Cambridge and trie author's child- 
hood : — The Poet at the Breakfast Table, pp. 10-32 ; A Mortal 
Antipathy, pp. 22-32. 

2. School days, 1819-1825 : — Pages from an Old Volume 
of Life, pp. 239-259. 

3. The class of 1829, Harvard : — Over the Teacups, pp. 
28-30 ; Poems of the class of 1829. 

4. Student days in the Harvard Medical School, 1830- 
1833 : —Medical Essays, pp. 420-440. 

5. First visit to Europe, 1833-1835 : — Our One Hundred 
Days in Europe, pp. 1-8. 

6. Early literary work, 1830-1857 : — A Mortal Antipathy, 
pp. 1-12. 

7. The Autocrat series : — Introduction to The Autocrat 
of the Breakfast Table; Over the Teacups, pp. 303-305. 

8. " My Hunt After the Captain," 1862 : — Pages from an 
Old Volume of Life, pp. 16-77. 

9. Memoirs of Motley and Emerson : — A Mortal An- 
tipathy, pp. 13-20. 

10. Our One Hundred Days in Europe, 1886. 

11. Over the Teacups, Introduction. 

" I took my first draught of that fatal mixture called atmospheric 
air on the 29th of August, 1809. My father's record of the fact is 
before me on a page of the ' Massachusetts Register ' in the form 
of a brief foot-note thus : ' = 29. son b.' The sand which he threw 
on the fresh ink is glittering on it still." — Letter to the New York 
Critic. 

The poet's father, the penner of this four-letter 
record, was the Rev. Abiel Holmes, for forty years 
pastor of the first parish in Cambridge and author of 



276 AMERICAN LITERATURE. 

The Annals of America, a scholarly work of much value. 
The poet's mother, a daughter of the distinguished 
lawyer, Oliver Wendell, could trace her descent from 
the Quincys and the Bradstreets, — the best blood of 
New England. Holmes not only inherited an intellect 
refined by generations of culture, but he spent his early 
years in the shadow of the great university and in a 
mellow atmosphere of culture and refinement. No man 
could have better reason to say as he did in after years : 
" I go for the man who inherits family traditions and the 
cumulative humanities of at least four or five genera- 
tions. Above all things, as a child he should have 
tumbled about in a library. All men are afraid of books 
that have not handled them from infancy." 

Holmes entered Harvard in 1825, the year in which 
Hawthorne and Longfellow ' received their degrees at 
Bowdoin, and a year before Poe entered the Univer- 
sity of Virginia. His college career was a brilliant one. 
He ranked high in his studies, and he was class poet at 
the close of his course, an honor gained by his sparkling 
contributions to the Collegian, some of the best-known 
of which were " The Spectre Pig," " The Height of the 
Ridiculous," and " Evening : by a Tailor." 

Holmes' class, in many respects the most remarkable 
one ever graduated from Harvard, had among its mem- 
bers such famous men as James Freeman Clarke, Ben- 
jamin Pierce, the mathematician, Samuel F. Smith, 
author of "America," W. H. Channing, Benjamin R. 
Curtis, Samuel May, and others nearly as well known. 
Holmes has celebrated this class in a remarkable series 



THE CAMBBIDGE POETS. 211 

of lyrics, — perhaps the best occasional poems in our 
literature. 

The reverend father of the poet had designated his 
son for the pulpit. Holmes saw more of an opening in 
the legal profession, but after a year spent in reading 
Blackstone and Coke, he decided to take up the study 
of medicine, and accordingly spent two years and a half 
in the Harvard Medical School, afterwards going abroad 
for three years to finish his studies in Paris and Edin- 
burgh. On his return to America he was, in 1838, 
appointed professor of anatomy and physiology at 
Dartmouth College, and, in 1847, was called to the 
same chair at Harvard, which chair he held for thirty- 
five years, resigning, in 1882, that he might devote his 
whole time to literary work. 

Holmes' Literary Life may be divided into two dis- 
tinct periods : the first ending in 1857, characterized by 
his early work as a poet; the second marked by his 
work in the various departments of prose. 

Had Holmes died in 1857, eight years after Poe — 
who was born the same year — had closed his life-work, 
he would have been remembered in literature only as 
the author of two exquisite lyrics and a few genuinely 
humorous poems like " The Ballad of the Oysterman," 
" The Dorchester Giant,' 1 " The Comet," " The Tread- 
mill Song," and "The Height of the Ridiculous." 
Holmes has characterized this period of his literary life 
as that of his " First Portfolio." 

It " had boyhood written on every page. A single passionate 
outcry when the old war-ship I had read about in the broadsides 



278 AMERICAN LITERATURE. 

that were a part of our kitchen literature, and in the Naval Mon- 
ument, was threatened with demolition ; a few verses, suggested 
at the sight of old Major Melville in his cocked hat and breeches, 
were the best scraps that came out of that first Portfolio, which 
was soon closed that it should not interfere with the duties of a 
profession authorized to claim all the time and thought which 
would have been otherwise expended in filling it. During a quar- 
ter of a century the first Portfolio remained closed for the greater 
part of the time. Only now and then it would be taken up and 
opened, and something drawn from it for a special occasion, more 
particularly for the annual reunions of a certain class of which I 
was a member." — Introduction to A Mortal Antipathy. 

The lyrics "Old Ironsides" and "The Last Leaf" 
gave Holmes at the very start a secure place among 
American poets. The former, called by Bryant "the 
most spirited of naval lyrics," has been declaimed by 
schoolboys for more than half a century, and will prob- 
ably hold its place with the half-dozen most popular 
poems in our literature. " The Last Leaf," which, as 
Professor Richardson wittily suggests, stands upon the 
first leaf of Holmes' published works, deserves Abra- 
ham Lincoln's characterization as " inexpressibly touch- 
ing." The great statesman never tired of that exquisite 

minor chord, 

" The mossy marbles rest 
On the lips that he has pressed 

In their bloom ; 
And the names he loved to hear 
Have been carved for many a year 

On the tomb." 

Had Holmes written nothing else, he would not be 

forgotten. 

Required Reading. — "Old Ironsides," "The Last Leaf," and 
the five humorous lyrics mentioned above. 



THE CAMBRIDGE POETS. 279 

1. " The Chambered Nautilus, * ' which appeared first in 
The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table in 1857, and which 
is the high- water mark of the poet's poetical achieve- 
ment, may be taken as the representative of the more 
serious products of Holmes' Muse. " The Living Tem- 
ple," "Voiceless," "Sun and Shadow," "The Silent 
Melody," "Avis," "Iris," and "Under the Violets," 
the best of the poems of graver moods, are also full of 
rare beauty and artistic symbolism. Some of Holmes' 
historical ballads, like " Grandmother's Story of the 
Bunker Hill Battle " and the " Ballad of the Boston 
Tea Party," are also to be classed among the poet's 
more serious and substantial work. In his later patriotic 
lyrics, the " Flower of Liberty," " God Save the Flag," 
and " Union and Liberty," are to be found the same 
passion and fire that burned so fiercely in the " Old 
Ironsides " of earlier years. 

2. "The Deacon's Masterpiece/ ' which also appeared 
first in The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table, is the best 
representative of the poet's broadly humorous work. 
Wit and humor, indeed, are Holmes' most prominent 
characteristics. As early as 1848, Lowell, in the Fable 
for Critics, wrote: 

" There's Holmes who is famous among you for wit, 
A Leyden jar always full charged from which flit 
Electrical tingles of hit after hit." 

Holmes' wit sparkles from every page that he has 
written. It is mingled with the pathos of his more 
serious poems, when it becomes humor of the truest 
kind. To- divide his poems into two classes, his hu- 



280 AMERICAN LITERATURE. 

morous and his non-humorous work, would be to sepa- 
rate a few of his more serious poems from the great bulk 
of his poetical product. The best poems represented by 
" The Deacon's Masterpiece " are " How the Old Horse 
won the Bet," "Parson Truell's Legacy," and "The 
Broomstick Train." 

3. Occasional Poems. — By actual count forty-seven 
per cent, of Holmes' poems were written for various 
occasions. During the last period of his literary life the 
greater part of his verses were written to order. One 
has only to glance over the list to realize how vast and 
varied were the demands made upon his Muse. Class 
reunions, centennials of every kind, dedications of all 
possible things, anniversaries, arrivals and departures of 
celebrated guests and prominent men, meetings of medi- 
cal, agricultural, and Phi Beta Kappa societies, festivals 
and jubilees, all found in Holmes a ready laureate. 
The Muse of most poets refuses to be commanded, but 
Holmes' Pegasus was alwa}^s bridled and ready for 
flight. He was never more brilliant than with " a poem 
served to order." At public banquets, where wit and 
cheer ran high, Holmes was at his best, and his spark- 
ling verses, "popping with the corks," were always the 
very best thing of the occasion. Says Dr. Hale : " Per- 
fect as they are to the reader, they are more than perfect 
when he stands on a bench at a college dinner and with 
all his overflow of humor, of pathos, and of eloquence 
recites them." 

For half a century Holmes was the laureate of Har- 
vard College. Alma mater was to him more than it has 



THE CAMBRIDGE POETS. 281 

been to any other American poet. Forty-four of his 
poems were written to celebrate his college class, and 
many others were composed for Phi Beta Kappa meet- 
ings and college celebrations. While by no means the 
leader of the Cambridge group of poets, Holmes seemed 
the one of all others most closely connected with the 
old college town. He seemed, indeed, almost the incar- 
nation of the old Harvard spirit and traditions. 

Suggestions for Study. — Read all the lyrics whose titles 
have been given above. Make a list of the different occasions at 
which Holmes served as poet. How many poems are in any way 
connected with Harvard? How many of his poems remind you of 
his profession ? Have the occasional poems lost the sparkle and 
wit with the occasion that called them forth? How many of the 
poems are " metrical essays " written in the measure of Pope ? 
What is the difference between wit and humor ? (See dictionary.) 
How do you account for the playful touches in " The Last Leaf " ? 
Was Holmes a true humorist like Hood and Lamb ? How many 
of the poems are not humorous at all ? Judging from his poems, 
what was Holmes' attitude toward slavery? Is anything said 
about the negro in any of his poems? What was his attitude 
toward disunion? What melancholy interest attaches to the last 
stanza of "The Last Leaf"? 

" The New Portfolio." — " At thirty," wrote the Auto- 
crat, " we are all trying to cut our names in big letters 
upon this tenement of life. Twenty years later we 
have carved it or shut up our jack-knives." If Holmes 
was busy carving during this period of his life, it must 
have been on the walls of the Harvard Medical School ; 
for it was not until he had reached his forty-ninth year 
that he commenced the literary work that has made 
his name immortal. When the Atlantic Monthly was 



282 AMERICAN LITERATURE. 

founded in 1857, Lowell took its editorial chair only on 
condition that Holmes should contribute a series of 
articles to the first volume. The result was The Auto- 
crat of the Breakfast Table, one of the most original and 
striking contributions ever made to American literature, 
and from that time Holmes, the genial autocrat and 
prose writer, became even better known than Holmes, 
the poet. 

His prose work falls naturally under four heads: The 
Autocrat series, novels, biographies, and medical es- 
says. 

1. The Autocrat Series consists of four books: The 
Autocrat of the Breakfast Table (1858), The Professor 
at the Breakfast Table (1859), The Poet at the Breakfast 
Table (1873), and Over the Teacups (1890). The plan 
of the series is a very simple one. Given a somewhat 
idealized boarding-house table with the variety of char- 
acters not unnaturally found about it ; let Dr. Holmes 
take the lead and report the discussions, the gossipings, 
the sallies of wit, and the plan is complete. The chap- 
ters and books ripple on and on without restraint or 
definite aim ; now broad and serene, reflecting the sky 
and the stars ; now deep and dark, hiding untold things ; 
now loitering through summer meadows or sparkling 
and dancing and babbling over the smooth shingle. 
Never were there books more delightful, with their 
exquisite thread of love story, their sparkling jokes and 
puns, their shrewd characterizations, their proverbs, 
their worldly wisdom, their sage observations on life 
and its problems. One lays down the book wondering 



THE CAMBRIDGE POETS. 283 

at the inexhaustible fountain that could have sent forth 
all this sparkling delight. " In these books," says the 
author, " I have unburdened myself of what I was born 
to say." 

The first book of the series is the best of all. Holmes 
compared it to the first wine of grapes that runs off 
itself. " The first of my series," he said in Over the Tea- 
cups, "came from my mind almost with an explosion, 
like the champagne cork ; it startled me a little to see 
what I had written, and to hear what people said about 
it. After that first explosion the flow was more sober, 
and I looked upon the product of my wine-press more 
coolly." The Poet at the Breakfast Table, which was 
written when Holmes was sixty-four years of age, is of 
a more serious cast than the others, dealing largely with 
the poet's outlook upon social, literary, and intellectual 
problems. Over the Teacups was written in the white 
winter of the poet's eightieth year. Its atmosphere is 
inevitably reminiscent and its author took no pains to 
hide his own personality. In many respects it is the 
most charming book of the series ; in none of the others 
does one get nearer to the genial, lovable poet whom 
time seemed powerless to impair. 

Suggestions for Study. — Read carefully The Autocrat and 
Over the Teacups. Name some of Holmes' best poems that first 
appeared in the Autocrat series. Compare the essay on old age in 
The Autocrat with that in Over the Teacups, one written at forty- 
eight, the other at eighty. Is there any difference in the point of 
view? Make a list of some of the brightest proverbs and epi- 
grams. What seems to you his brightest joke? Stedman says 
"he coins here and there a phrase destined to be long current," — 



284 AMERICAN LITERATURE. 

can you find any of these phrases? Find evidence of Holmes' 
love of trees. Does his treatment of young poets in Over the Tea- 
cups seem to you unjust? Compare with the characterization of 
Gifted Hopkins in The Guardian Angel. Can you find anything 
in The Autocrat that you had thought of yourself but could not 
express? Which one of Holmes' characters seems to you the best 
drawn? Are there any characters in Over the Teacups that had 
previously appeared in The Autocrat? Read over the general 
index, Vol. X., and note how various and many were the subjects 
treated. 

2. As a Novelist Holmes deserves more than passing 
notice. His three novels, Elsie Venner (1860), The 
Gruardian Angel (1868), and A Mortal Antipathy 
(1885), are all studies of that "mysterious border- 
land which lies between physiology and psychology." 
Holmes' essay, " Crime and Automatism," might well 
be taken as an introduction to the series. They are all 
studies of various phases of the problem of heredity. 
Elsie Venner, whose aim, as its author has written, " was 
to illustrate this same innocently criminal automatism 
with the irresponsibility it implies, by the supposed 
mechanical introduction before birth of an ophidian ele- 
ment into the blood of a human being," is the strongest 
of the three novels. It has passages which in weird 
power remind one of Hawthorne. The Gruardian Angel, 
a story of inherited Indian blood, contains the best 
of Holmes' broadly humorous characterization. But 
although charming in style, like everything that bears 
their author's name, and containing here and there pas- 
sages of wonderful strength and beauty, these novels 
are not of the highest rank. While skilful in portray- 
ing character and abundantly able to introduce humor 



THE CAMBRIDGE POETS. 285 

and epigram, Holmes was deficient in constructive abil- 
ity. Had he possessed the art and the dramatic power 
of a Hawthorne, he might have become the great novel- 
ist of the century. 

3. His Biographies. — In his last years Holmes com- 
pleted two memorable biographies: his Memoirs of John 
Lothrop Motley (1879), and Ralph Waldo Emerson 
(1884). Both were written after a lifelong friendship, 
and both contain most careful and loving estimates. 
Says Stedman: " He has few superiors in discernment of 
a man's individuality, however distinct that individuality 
may be from his own. Emerson, for example, was a 
thinker and a poet, whose chartered disciples scarcely 
would have selected Holmes as likely to proffer a sym- 
pathetic or even objective transcript of him. Yet when 
the time came, Holmes was equal to the effort. He 
presented with singular clearness, and with an epi- 
grammatic genius at white heat, if not the esoteric view 
of the Concord Plotinus, at least what would enable an 
audience to get at the mould of that serene teacher and 
make some fortunate surmise of the spirit that ennobled 
it. I do not recall a more faithful and graphic outside 
portrait." 

4. Medical Essays. — But after all Holmes was first 
of all a physician. He gave to his profession his best 
hours and his best years. It was not until the last of 
his life that he was at all sure whether he was to be 
remembered as a scientist or as a man of letters. Said 
President Eliot at the Holmes breakfast in 1879 : "I 
know him as the professor of anatomy and physiology 



286 AMERICAN LITERATURE, 

in the medical school of Harvard University for the last 
thirty-two years, and I know him to-day as one of the 
most active and hardworking of our lecturers. . . . 
When I read his writing I find traces of this life-work 
of his on every page." It was indeed a remarkable 
versatility that could produce poems in every key, 
Autocrat papers, novels, biographies, and papers on 
" Currents and Counter-currents in Medical Science," 
and " The Contagiousness of Puerperal Fever." Holmes' 
medical essays, which were written mostly to be deliv- 
ered before medical associations and college classes, 
are fearless and original, provoking in their day wide- 
spread discussion. 

Holmes 1 Place and Influence. — (Stedman, Ch, VIII. ; 
Richardson, I., 3T2 ; Whipple's American Literature ; 
Curtis' Literary and Social Essays; Haweis' American 
Humorists, 43.) Few authors of Holmes' depth have 
covered so wide a field or done their work so uniformly 
well. He was not a great thinker; he brought no 
burning message ; he seldom struck the deep strata of 
life : but he knew the world surprisingly well and he 
touched its life at a thousand different points. He 
skimmed with wonderful grace over a vast amount of 
surface, but he seldom dived deep below. Like Pope, 
he could recut a somewhat commonplace idea until it 
scintillated at every point. With both it mattered not 
so much what ? as how ? 

But had Holmes nothing to commend him but his wit, 
he would soon be forgotten. He possessed a deep vein 
of pathos, which, mingled with his wit, produced humor 



THE CAMBRIDGE POETS. 287 

of the genuine kind. In reading his books one may 
not always tell whether the tears that sometimes come 
are from sympathy or from laughter. It is as a humor- 
ist that Holmes will be longest remembered. " The 
Last Leaf," with its blended wit and pathos, will be the 
last leaf of his works to perish. 

Holmes' hearty laugh and his keen enjoyment of the 
sweets of life have played their part in moulding the 
spirit of the century. " Whittier did more than 
Holmes," says J. W. Chadwick, " to soften the Puri- 
tan theology, but Holmes did vastly more than Whittier 
to soften the Puritan temper of the community. . . . 
His was 'an undisguised enjoyment of earthly com- 
forts ' ; a happy confidence in the excellence and glory 
of our present life ; a persuasion, as one has said, that 
'if God made us, then he also meant us,' and he held to 
these things so earnestly, so pleasantly, so cheerily, that 
he could not help communicating them to everything he 
wrote. They pervade his books and poems like a most 
subtle essence, and his readers took them in at every 
breath. Many entered into his labors, and some, no 
doubt, did more than he to save what was best in the 
Puritan conscience while softening what was worse in 
the Puritan temper and what was most terrible in the 
Puritan theology. It does not appear that any one else 
did so much as Dr. Holmes to change the social temper 
of New England, to make it less harsh and joyless, and 
to make easy for his fellow-countrymen the transition 
from the old things to the new." 



XXI. 

THE CAMBRIDGE POETS (3). 
James Eussell Lowell (1819-1891). 

"No man, certainly no American, in the latter part of the nine- 
teenth century had so various and admirable gifts — Poet, Wit, 
Moralist, Scholar, Diplomat, Gentleman." — T. B. Aldrich. 

" Think, as is his due, upon the high-water marks of his abundant 
tide, and see how enviable the record of a poet who is our most bril- 
liant and learned critic, and who has given us our best native idyl, our 
best and most complete work in dialectic verse, and the noblest heroic 
ode that America has produced, — each and all ranking with the first 
of their kinds in English literature of the modern time." — Stedman. 

Life. — (The most complete and authentic biography 
of Lowell that has yet appeared is that by G. E. Wood- 
berry in the American Men of Letters Series. F. H. 
Underwood's Biographical Sketch contains much valu- 
able criticism, and E. E. Brown's Life can be consulted 
with profit. Lowell's Letters, edited in two volumes by 
Charles Eliot Norton, give many charming glimpses of 
the poet's personality and friendships.) 

A glance at a list of birth years of great men seems to 
confirm the saying of Schiller that the immortals never 
appear alone. The year of 1807 is memorable as the 
birth year of Longfellow, Whittier, Richard Hildreth, 
and C. C. Felton ; 1809 presents at the head of its list 
Gladstone, Lincoln, Darwin, Tennyson, Mrs. Browning, 

288 



THE CAMBRIDGE POETS. 289 

Holmes, Poe, and Lord Houghton ; and 1819 is marked 
by such names as W. W. Story, E. P. Whipple, Herman 
Melville, Julia Ward Howe, J. G. Holland, T. W. Par- 
sons, Walt Whitman, " George Eliot," Ruskin, Charles 
Kingsley, and James Russell Lowell. 

Lowell was born in Cambridge, Massachusetts, Feb. 
22, in the old mansion "Elm wood," where he passed 
his life. The house is still standing, a delightful struct- 
ure built after the Colonial pattern, amid spacious 
grounds filled with ancient English elms, bounded on 
one side by Mount Auburn Cemetery, and a near neigh- 
bor to the " Old Craigie House," sacred with memories 
of Washington and Longfellow. Like Holmes and 
Longfellow, Lowell inherited the " cumulative humani- 
ties " of several generations of sturdy, intellectual men. 
The American branch of the family originated in Perci- 
val Lowell, who came to Massachusetts in early Puritan 
times. One of the family founded the busy city of 
Lowell ; another endowed the Lowell Institute in Bos- 
ton; Dr. Charles Lowell, the poet's father, was long 
the pastor of the West Congregational Church of 
Boston. Lowell inherited his gift of poesy, however, 
from his mother, who was of Scotch descent and of a 
highly poetical temperament, and who possessed an inex- 
haustible store of the old Scottish romances of the border, 
which " she sung over the cradles of her children and 
repeated in their early school days until poetic lore and 
feeling were as natural to them as the bodily senses." 
The Cambridge lad had everything to develop the poetic 
instinct within him: books, refined society, and the 



290 AMERICAN LITERATURE. 

classic influences of the old college town. Nature, too, 
appealed to him strongly. He delighted in the woods 
and fields, where he gathered the impressions that were 
in time to shape themselves into the noblest of nature 
poems. 

Lowell entered Harvard at the age of sixteen and 
was graduated in 1838, nine years after the class immor- 
talized by Holmes. His college career was not especially 
brilliant, for the reason, as he has himself confessed, that 
he studied everything but his text-books. Like so many 
other American authors, he sought the law immediately 
after his graduation, and in 1840 was even admitted to 
the bar, but to his great delight he was unsought by 
clients. One year later the fruits of his legal practice 
appeared in the volume of poems A Yearns Life, which, 
although but little better than the average poet's first 
book, contained here and there rare promises of better 
work to come. In 1843 he established, in connection 
with Robert Carter, a literary magazine called The Pio- 
neer, with Hawthorne, Poe, and Mrs. Browning as 
contributors, but it died after the third number. Dur- 
ing the same year he married Miss Maria White, 
herself a poet of note and a prominent abolitionist, 
and also published his second venture in the poetical 
field. 

Three Periods, more or less distinct, may be recog- 
nized in Lowell's literary life, and the lines of cleavage 
were much the same as those in Holmes' literary career. 
The first period, which opened in 1844 with the publica- 
tion of his first significant book of poems, and which 



THE CAMBRIDGE POETS. 291 

was passed, with the exception of two trips to Europe, 
in comparative seclusion at " Elmwood," may be called 
the period of his greatest poetical achievement, since it 
witnessed the production of his most distinctly indi- 
vidual work, The Vision of Sir Launfal (1845), the 
first series of The Biglow Papers (1848), and A Fable 
for Critics (1848). 

The second period, which opened in 1857 with his 
assumption of the chair which had just been vacated by 
Longfellow at Harvard, and the editorship of the 
Atlantic Monthly, may be called the period of literary 
criticism. Lowell edited the first nine volumes of the 
Atlantic, and from 1863 until 1872 was joint editor with 
Charles Eliot Norton of the North American Review. 
His magazine articles during this time, which make up 
the greater part of his critical work, have been published 
in four volumes : Fireside Travels, Among my Boohs, 
two series, and "My Study Windows. His editorial 
work, however, did not interfere with his duties at 
Harvard. The twenty years of his professorship there 
may be taken roughly as the second period of his 
literary life. 

The third and last period of his life was marked by his 
national poems and addresses. Few men have been more 
thoroughly and proudly American than Lowell. Both 
series of The Biglow Papers, as well as his burning anti- 
slavery lyrics during the war, show his intense patri- 
otism. His noble " Commemoration Ode," delivered at 
the close of the war, his three odes published together 
in 1876, and his ringing address on Democracy mark 



292 AMERICAN LITERATURE. 

him as one of the truest Americans of the century. 
Lowell was a born reformer; his hate of tyrants and 
demagogues was fierce and pitiless. It gave color to 
his whole life-work, and to fix an absolute date as the 
opening of this last period would be absurd. Yet the 
year 1876, which witnessed the publication of his Three 
Memorial Poems, and which was followed by his appoint- 
ment as minister to Spain and later to the Court of 
St. James in England, may be taken as an approximate 
date. During the last twenty years of his life Lowell 
stood as the most eminent champion of true Ameri- 
canism and pure Democratic government. 

I. As a Poet. — While Lowell is undoubtedly the 
greatest literary critic that America has thus far pro- 
duced, it is as a poet that he has done his most perma- 
nent work. The best of his poems represent without 
question the highest and most sustained flights of the 
American Muse. Emerson alone* among our poets is to 
be compared with him; and yet while Emerson occa- 
sionally touched the heights, it was but to fall inglori- 
ously. The sustained excellence of The Vision of Sir 
Launfal and " The Commemoration Ode " is hard indeed 
to be equalled among the poets of the Victorian era. 
Lowell's poetry may be divided into four classes : Poems 
of Nature ; Humorous and Dialectic Poems ; Poems of 
Culture ; and National Poems. 

1. Poems of Nature. — Lowell is par excellence the 
poet of June as Bryant is of autumn. In the opening 
lines of Sir Launfal and in " Under the Willows," the 
poet has poured forth his joy in this perfect month. How 



THE CAMBRIDGE POETS. 293 

could mere words express more of rapturous delight 
than that impassioned burst — 

" Gladness of woods, skies, waters, all in one, 
The bobolink has come, and, like the soul 
Of the sweet season vocal in a bird, 
Gurgles in ecstasy we know not what 
Save June, dear June, now God be praised for June ! " 

Lowell's pictures of nature are always true and always 

spontaneous. Such poems as " To the Dandelion " and 

" An Indian Summer Reverie " came not only from an 

intimate knowledge of nature's secrets, but from a heart 

good and true. 

Required Reading. — " Under the Willows " ; " An Indian 
Summer Reverie "; " To the Dandelion " ; " The First Snow Fall" ; 
" Pictures from Appledore." 

2. Humorous and Dialectic. — For sparkling wit and 
rollicking fun Lowell is to be compared only with Irving 
and Holmes. He was quick to see the comical aspects 
of his surroundings ; he had an attentive ear for all 
peculiarities of pronunciation and diction ; he was an 
irresistible punster and when " bound to rhyme," as in 
A Fable for Critics and " The Unhappy Lot of Mr. 
Knott," no word appalled him, — 

" He nerved his larynx for the desperate thing 
And cleared the five-barred syllables at a spring." 

A Fable for Critics, which was published in 1848, 
was, like Irving's Knickerbocker, a jeu oV esprit full of 
the broadest fun, under much of which, however, lurked 
the sting of satire. Some of the criticism, as that of 
Foe, Bryant, Whittier, Hawthorne, Irving, Holmes, 



294 AMERICAN LITERATURE. 

Carlyle, and Emerson, is excellently done and in every 
way worthy of a place with the poet's best critical work, 
but the poem as a whole is marred by hastily written 
lines, inelegant, even coarse, expressions, and a general 
suspicion of flippancy. 

It is upon The Biglow Papers, the first series of which | 
appeared in 1848, that Lowell's fame as a humorist chiefly 
depends. The story of this series is best given in the 
author's own words. 

" Thinking the Mexican War, as I think it still, a national crime 
committed in behoof of slavery, our common sin, and wishing to 
put the feeling of those who thought as I did in a way that would 
tell, I imagined to myself such an up-country man as I had often 
seen at antislavery gatherings, capable of district-school English, 
but always instinctively falling back into the natural stronghold of 
his homely dialect when heated to the point of self-forgetfulness. 
When I begun to carry out my conception and to write in my 
assumed character, I found myself in a strait between two perils. 
On the one hand I was in danger of being carried beyond the 
limit of my own opinions, or at least of that temper with which 
every man should speak his mind in print, and on the other I 
feared the risk of seeming to vulgarize a deep and sacred convic- 
tion. I needed on occasion to rise above mere jpatois, and for this 
purpose conceived the Rev. Mr. Wilbur, who should express the 
more cautious element of the New England character and its 
pedantry, as Mr. Biglow should serve for its homely common sense 
vivified and heated by conscience. The parson was to be the com- 
plement rather than the antithesis of his parishioner, and I felt or fan- 
cied a certain humorous element in the real identity of the two under 
a seeming incongruity. Mr. Wilbur's fondness for scraps of Latin, 
though drawn from the life, I adopted deliberately to heighten the 
contrast. Finding soon after that I needed some one as a mouth- 
piece of the mere drollery, for I conceive that true humor is never 
divorced from moral conviction, I invented Mr. Sawin for the 
clown of my puppet-show. The success of my experiment soon 



THE CAMBRIDGE POETS. 295 

began not only to astonish me, but to make me feel the responsi- 
bility of knowing that I held in my hand a weapon instead of the 
mere fencing stick I had supposed." — Introduction to Second Series. 

Under all of Lowell's culture and learning there 
lurked the droll, cute Yankee, — practical, opinionated, 
and withal intensely free. Of all his works The Biglow 
Papers is the most original and individual; nowhere 
else do we get so near the poet. He was himself the 
original of Hosea Biglow. The crudeness and the quaint 
dialect alone were feigned. Every line of the poem came 
burning from his heart. One must laugh, and laugh 
immoderately sometimes, at the homely comparisons, 
the ingenious rhymes, the irresistible drollery of the 
dialect, and the curious conceits, but even the most 
careless cannot fail to recognize under the thin veil of 
fun a terrible earnestness. 

The second series of The Biglow Papers, which ap- 
peared during the Civil War, and which voiced the 
poet's indignation, at slavery and secession, while 
lacking the freshness and vigor of the earlier poems, 
accomplished, nevertheless, untold good for the Union 
cause. The two series together make up a work which 
may be added to the very small list of books distinc- 
tively American. Hosea Biglow and Parson Wilbur 
are numbered with the few great original creations with 
which America has enriched the literature of the world. 

Required Beading. — The Biglow Papers, first series ; " The 
Courtin'." 

3. Poems of Culture. — The contrast between The 
Biglow Papers and the class of poems represented by 



296 AMERICAN LITERATURE. 

The Vision of Sir Launfal is very great. Few poets in 
the history of literature have produced works so anti- 
thetical in every respect. The Biglow Papers, with 
their utter disregard for polish and literary art, with 
their burning satire, their intense convictions, and their 
irresistible humor, reveal Lowell in his native dress. 
We see in these poems the true Lowell, pouring his 
message from his heart without a thought of effect or of 
art, as did Burns and Whittier. In The Vision of Sir 
Launfal we lose sight of the poet, but we see in every 
line a refinement of touch that could have been gained 
only by careful study and by long contact with the 
rarest in art. Sir Launfal, in its exquisite workmanship, 
in its sentiment, its lofty conception, its descriptions, is 
without question "the high-water mark of American 
poetry." Among the best of Lowell's other poems of 
culture may be named " The Legend of Brittany," which 
in its sweet simplicity reminds one of Chaucer ; " Rhoe- 
cus," which is almost Grecian in its perfect art ; " A 
Glance behind the Curtain," " Columbus," and " The 
Cathedral." 

Suggestions for a Study of Sir Launfal. — To what 
well-known English poem do 11. 9 and 10 allude? Compare the 
description of June here with that in " Under the Willows " and 
"An Indian Summer Reverie." Point out the few strokes by 
which the poet's picture of summer is sketched in 11. 109-118. 
Point out and explain the descriptive epithets in the prelude to 
Part Second, e.g. "steel-stemmed" trees " and "silvery moss." 
Notice the wonderful strength and beauty of the picture of Christ- 
mas Eve in 11. 221-224. Which seems to you most beautiful, 
Lowell's picture of June or of December? Explain the poetic 
touches in 11. 216, 218, 219, 242, 245, 264. What was the legend 



THE CAMBRIDGE POETS. 297 

of the Holy Grail? Compare Lowell's treatment of the legend 
with Tennyson's " The Holy Grail." Explain the mediaeval words 
in 11. 97, 128, 133, 233. What significance in Sir Launfal's setting 
out on his quest in June and returning in December ? How; can 
the poem be taken as a type of human life ? What is the lesson 
of the poem? Does Stedman's remark that it is "really a land- 
scape poem " seem to you just ? Commit to memory the finest 
passages of the poem. 

4. National Poems. — It is a significant fact that the 
larger part of Lowell's collected poems is taken up by 
the antislavery lyrics, The Biglow Papers, and the four 
memorial addresses, all of them poems of a national 
and patriotic character. Freedom was the keynote of 
Lowell's political creed ; it rings from all of his national 
poems : it inspired the fierce sarcasm of The Biglow 
Papers; it rung in the noble ode that commemorated 
Harvard's heroic dead at the close of the war ; from the 
Concord Ode, which is a rhapsody to freedom; from 
the Centennial Ode, and from the heroic verses of 
Under the Old Mm. In these odes Lowell's Muse 
reached her sublimest heights. The fifty-nine lines 
of The Commemoration Ode, commencing "And such 
was he, our Martyr Chief," and ending with the grand 
climax : 

" Great captains, with their guns and drums, 
Disturb our judgment for the hour, 
But at last silence comes ; 
These all are gone and, standing like a tower, 
Our children shall behold his fame, 
The kindly-earnest, brave, foreseeing man, 
Sagacious, patient, dreading praise, not blame, 
New birth of our new soil, the first American ; " 



298 AMERICAN LITERATURE. 

and the forty lines of Under the Old Elm, commencing 
" Virginia gave us this imperial man," should be learned 
by heart by every American. 

Eequiked Reading. — Lowell's four Memorial Odes. 

II. As a Prose Writer. — Lowell's prose work is al- 
most wholly in the form of essays, which may be divided 
into three classes : Essays in Literary Criticism, Sketches, 
and Political Essays. 

1. The Essays in Criticism, which represent the care- 
ful study of a lifetime, are a real contribution to the 
critical literature of the world. The greater number of 
these are studies of old English poets and prose writers 
from Chaucer to Keats and Landor ; from Izaak Walton 
to Carlyle. There, are papers, too, on continental lit- 
erature, — scholarly studies of Dante, Rousseau, and 
Lessing ; nor are his own countrymen neglected, as 
the vigorous portraits of Josiah Quincy, Thoreau, and 
Lincoln testify. From every page of these essays shine 
forth evidences of rare scholarship, a wide and varied 
acquaintance with literature, a refined taste, a sound 
judgment, and a delicate humor. To one who can read 
them, they are delightful. They were not designed to 
be popular in the broad sense, — only the few can enjoy 
them. They imply in the reader a wide range of study 
and reading and a taste for the best in literature. 
Lowell's style is suggestive rather than direct. The 
reader must often use his imagination or lose the most 
subtle part of the author's thought. The figures, too, 
and the allusions take for granted on the reader's part a 
broad acquaintance with mythology, history, and general 



THE CAMBRIDGE POETS. 299 

literature. To the uneducated Lowell's critical essays 
must ever remain a closed book, but to those who can 
judge of them they are without question one of the 
rarest creations of the century in their field. 

2. LoivelVs Sketches, however, can be read with pleas- 
ure by the multitude. In such papers as " My Garden 
Acquaintance," " A Good Word for Winter," " A Moose- 
head Journal," and " At Sea," we come once more 
into the presence of the author himself, as we did in The 
Biglow Papers. Here again is the real Lowell, full of 
sparkling humor and of comradeship ; wise, observant, 
and very close to nature. No better companion can be 
imagined for a garden walk, a scramble over the 
" Northwest Carry " ; for a journey across the sea and 
into distant lands. 

3. Of LoivelVs Political Essays "Democracy," an 
address delivered at Birmingham, England, in 1884, a 
masterly summary of its author's political beliefs, may 
be taken as the best representative. 

Required Reading. — The essays on Chaucer, Keats, and 
Izaak Walton; "My Garden Acquaintance," "A Moosehead 
Journal," and " Democracy." Compare Lowell's " At Sea " with 
Irving's " The Voyage." 

Lowell's Place and Influence. — (Stedman, IX.; Rich- 
ardson, I., 416 ; Haweis' American Humorists, 81 ; 
"Lowell as a Prose Writer," Whipple's Outlooks on 
Society; Curtis' Literary and Social Essays; Dow- 
den's Studies in Literature, 472.) In viewing Lowell's 
work as a whole, one is surprised first of all at the ver- 
satility of the man. He was as varied in his literary ac- 



300 AMERICAN LITERATURE. 

complishments as was Holmes. Says his biographer, 
Underwood : 

"What adjective will convey the many-sidedness of Lowell? 
When we read the tender story of ' The First Snowfall/ the wise 
lessons of ' Ambrose/ the prophetic strains of ' The Present 
Crisis' and of 'Villa Franca/ the wit and shrewdness of Hosea 
Biglow, the delicious humor of the garrulous Parson, the delicate 
beauty of ' Sir Launfal/ the grandeur of the ' Commemoration 
Ode/ the solemn splendor of 'The Cathedral/ what can we do 
but wonder at the imaginative power that takes on these various 
shapes, and moves in such diverse ways to touch our souls in every 
part? When, in addition, we consider his vigorous, learned, and 
glowing prose essays, full of color like fresh studies from the fields, 
full of wit that not only sparkles in epigram but pervades and 
lightens the whole, and full of an elastic spirit such as belongs to 
immortal youth, we find enough to give him enduring fame if he 
had never written a line of verse." 

Lowell was first of all a poet. His literary criticism 
exquisite as it is, is inferior to his best poetical efforts. 
His best poems are his nature lyrics and his Biglow 
Papers. Few poets have caught so well the true poetry 
of nature, — the joy of June, the tipsy rapture of the 
bobolink, the song of the bluebird, and the icy breath of 
winter. In The Biglow Papers we have the very heart 
and soul of New England rural life. "No richer juice 
can be pressed from the wild grape of the Yankee 
soil." These poems will tolerate no imitation; the 
Yankee dialect as a literary property was discovered b}^ 
Lowell, and its discoverer spoke the last word con- 
cerning it. The Biglow Papers are without question 
Lowell's most original and most permanent contribu- 
tion to American literature. 



THE CAMBRIDGE POETS. 301 

Of Lowell's service in strengthening and broadening 
our literature in the critical period of its development, 
too much cannot be said. As editor during an important 
epoch of the Atlantic Monthly, the mouthpiece of the 
most remarkable group of authors that our nation has 
produced, and later as editor of the North American 
Review, he had a chance which is presented to few liter- 
ary men. His impress on the literary product of the 
period is everywhere visible. There are but few of 
the younger school of writers who did not receive their 
first impetus from a kind word of criticism or encourage- 
ment from this zealous builder of American literature. 
Lowell's influence has extended beyond his own land. 
He, more than any one else of the century, "has made 
American letters and culture respected abroad. No 
one has done more than he to lessen the gulf between 
England and America. 

Two Minor Poets, both born the same year as Lowell, 
belong inseparably with the Cambridge group. 

Thomas William Parsons (1819-1892), a native of 
Boston and educated in the Latin School of that city, 
went to Italy in 1836 to devote himself to the study of 
Italian literature, and in 1843 published the first part of 
his masterly translation of Dante's Inferno. Parsons 
was one of the little Cambridge circle that, with Long- 
fellow and Lowell, devoted itself for years to the study of 
Dante. As a poet he produced but little. He occupies in 
American literature a place somewhat analogous to that 
held in English literature by Gray and Collins, having 
written only a few poems, but those of surpassing excel- 



302 AMERICAN LITERATURE. 

lence. Few lyrics in our literature surpass in strength 
and grandeur his lines " On the Bust of Dante," begin- 
ning 

" See from this counterfeit of him, 
Whom Arno shall remember long, 
How stern of lineament, how grim 
The father was of Tuscan song." 

William Wetmore Story, (1819-1895), son and 
biographer of the celebrated jurist, Joseph Story, and a 
member of Lowell's class at Harvard, after a short career 
as a lawyer, went to Rome in 1848 to study painting and 
sculpture. He soon gained wide-spread fame as a sculp- 
tor of ideal figures, his statues of Saul, Delilah, and 
Cleopatra in particular winning for him a high place 
among the artists of the century. He also became 
widely known as a poet. Among his published works 
in prose and verse may be mentioned Roba di Roma ; or 
Walks and Talks about Rome (1862), Tragedy of Nero 
(1875), Castle St. Angelo (1877), He and She; or a 
Poet's Portfolio (1883). Many of Story's lyrics, like 
"In the Moonlight," "Love and Death," "In the Gar- 
den," and " In the Rain," are sweet and melodious ; his 
dramatic studies, like "A Roman Lawyer in Jerusalem" 
and " Cleopatra," are often exceedingly strong and pas- 
sionate, but his poems, while delicate and scholarly, 
form no symmetrical whole ; they have no insistent and 
dominating note of individuality; they are un-American 
in theme and treatment, and they can never give their 
author a secure place among American poets. 



XXII. 
THE HISTORIANS. 

The second creative period of American literature, 
which opened with the same date as the Victorian era 
in England, witnessed in both countries, and indeed 
throughout Europe, the unprecedented development of 
two departments of literature, — prose fiction and his- 
torical narrative, these two becoming, during the last 
half of the century, the dominating forms of literary 
expression. The late rise and the remarkable growth 
of the novel has been already dwelt upon ; it remains 
to outline the equally remarkable development in the 
methods of historical composition. 

The historian of the old school relied largely upon 
hearsay; he accepted doubtful traditions, and, in the 
absence of evidence, sometimes accepted vague rumors 
or untrustworthy authorities. His books were dry 
chronicles of kings and battles, enlivened now and then 
by romantic though doubtful episodes. The modern 
historian, however, seeking first of all to arrive at the 
exact truth, spares no pains to consult every available 
source of authentic information. He searches the dry 
columns of contemporary newspapers ; he unearths and 
deciphers old letters, memoirs, private papers, and manu- 
scripts, and he sifts with tireless patience the innumera- 

303 



304 AMERICAN LITERATURE. 

ble public documents which have been recently opened 
to scholars. Motley, while writing his first history, 
toiled for ten years through the dusty archives of Spain 
and Holland, sometimes for months at a time speaking 
to no one save his family and the librarians. Parkman 
visited the scene of nearly every battle described in his 
histories, and he could at a moment's notice verify every 
date and statement by copies of original documents, 
which he kept carefully filed away. 

The modern historian, aside from patience and ability 
" to toil terribly," must possess a rare combination of 
powers. He must have sound judgment and an ac- 
curate sense of proportion to select and reject among 
ponderous masses of material, and to arrange all with 
due subordination of parts, and with a true perspective ; 
he must possess imagination, that he may project him- 
self into the past and actually live amid the scenes 
which he describes ; he must have critical insight, that 
he may trace causes and results and pronounce accurate 
judgments upon men and events ; and he must be master 
of a well-rounded prose style that he may be able to make 
the dry facts of his narrative as absorbingly interesting 
as fiction. He does not record alone the stories of wars 
and of state councils, but he traces as well what Macau- 
lay terms "noiseless revolutions," the silent growth 
among the scenes of quiet life of new ideas and new 
conditions to influence the spirit of the age. Macaulay 
has defined the true history as "the spirit of an age 
exhibited in miniature." 

Suggested Reading. — Macaulay's " Essay on History." 



THE HISTORIANS. 305 

Since the opening of the new era in historical com- 
position no nation has produced a more brilliant school 
of historians than our own. The father of American 
history of the modern type was Jared Sparks (1789- 
1866), of Harvard College, who collected with great 
skill and patience the writings of Washington and 
Franklin, edited The Diplomatic Correspondence of the 
American Revolution and The Library of American 
Biography, and wrote The Life of Giouverneur Morris. 
[Memoir of Jared Sparks, by George E. Ellis ; Richard- 
son, I., 454-459.] With the exception of Motley and of 
George Ticknor (1797-1871), who published in 1849 
the History of Spanish Literature, a work of the very 
highest rank, American historians have devoted them- 
selves to the study of American themes. Prescott 
wrote of the Spanish conquests in Peru and Mexico; 
Bancroft covered the history of the United States 
previous to the adoption of the Constitution ; Richard 
Hildreth (1807-1865) wrote a valuable work covering 
the same field and extending it to 1820 [Richardson, I., 
471-473] ; John G. Palfrey (1796-1881) wrote the 
standard History of New England ; Parkman, in a series 
of books that will never be supplanted, traced the 
history of France and England in North America. 
Later historians, like H. H. Bancroft, Justin Winsor, 
John Fiske, James Schouler, J. B. MacMaster, and 
others, have made valuable additions to our knowl- 
edge of early American history or have brought 
down the history of the United States nearer to the 
present day. Of the early American historians four 



306 AMERICAN LITERATURE. 

names stand pre-eminent : Prescott, Bancroft, Motley, 

and Parkman. 

Suggested Exercise. — On an outline map of America write 
on each section the name of its historian. 

1. William Hickling Prescott (1796-1859). 

Life (by George Ticknor). Like most of the great 
creators of our literature, Prescott inherited not only a 
name that was already famous in American annals, but 
the " cumulative humanities " of a long line of men of 
force and scholarship. His grandfather, to go back no 
farther, was one of the heroic defenders of Banker 
Hill, and his father was a lawyer of such commanding 
power that at the time of his death he was considered, 
by so eminent an authority as Webster, to stand " at 
the head of the bar of Massachusetts for legal learning 
and attainments." Prescott was born May 4, 1796, in 
the city that eight years later was to give to the world 
Nathaniel Hawthorne. In 1808 he removed with his 
parents to Boston and three years later was admitted to 
the sophomore class of Harvard College. It was while 
he was a junior in that institution that an accident oc- 
curred which rendered him nearly blind throughout the 
rest of his life. A crust of bread thrown during a 
moment of boisterous merriment at a dinner struck him 
in the open eye with such force as to produce concus- 
sion of the brain. For weeks he was threatened with 
total blindness, but at length, recovering a partial use 
of his sight, he returned to Harvard, where he succeeded 
in completing his course with credit, 



THE HISTORIANS. 307 

Prescott had intended to follow his father's profession, 
but his impaired eyesight, which threatened constantly 
to end in total blindness, forbade. After two years in 
Europe, where he consulted without relief the best 
oculists of the time, he returned to Boston and settled 
down to the work of his life, which circumstances had 
decreed should be the writing of the history of Spain 
during the romantic period before and after the dis- 
covery of America. It was a new field; Irving had 
done pioneer work in it, but much of it was as yet un- 
explored. Fortunately, Prescott, being liberally sup- 
plied with means, was able to prosecute his studies 
without having to be hampered by a profession. He 
employed a secretary, invented a writing-frame similar 
to those commonly used by the blind, and with great 
zeal and labor passed the next twelve years with the 
reign of Ferdinand and Isabella. The difficulties in the 
way of the heroic worker were almost insuperable. 
Holmes once declared that Prescott's Conquest of 
Mexico achieved itself " under difficulties hardly less 
formidable than those encountered by Cortez." 

The History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella 
was published in 1837, the year that witnessed so many 
notable beginnings in American literature. Its success 
was instantaneous, the brilliant period which it chron- 
icled, and the sparkle and dash of its style making it, 
for a time, like Macaulay's History of England, able to 
"supersede the last fashionable novel on the table of 
young ladies." The volume shone with all the more 
brightness since it was then almost a solitary phenom- 



308 AMERICAN LITERATURE. 

enon in American literature, Irving's Spanish histories, 
which had but recently appeared, being the only works 
with which to compare it. The first volume of Ban- 
croft's more weighty history, which had appeared three 
years before, had fallen from the press almost unnoticed 
by the multitude ; Motley and Hildreth, Palfrey and 
Parkman, were as yet unknown. 

In 1843 Prescott published the History of the Con- 
quest of Mexico and four years later the History of the 
Conquest of Peru. He then commenced what he in- 
tended should be his master work, the History of the 
Reign of Philip the Second, but he had completed only 
three volumes, covering about fifteen years of the mon- 
arch's long reign of forty-three years, when he was 
stricken with apoplexy and died in the midst of his 
labors, Jan. 28, 1859. 

His Style. — (Whipple's Hssays and Reviews, Vol. II. ; 
Richardson, I., 494-501 ; Ticknor's Life of Prescott, 
217-230.) The student of Prescott's style should not 
forget that his histories deal with a brilliant and pictu- 
resque era. The vague, mediaeval background of Fer- 
dinand and Isabella; the tropical Spanish character; the 
pageantry and pomp and romance of the Moorish wars ; 
the discovery of a new world; the feverish dreams of 
gold and empire, and the mad delirium of the American 
conquests, — all these demanded a most gorgeous can- 
vas. No one could be dull with such, material, and 
Prescott, who possessed a vivid imagination and a mas- 
tery of graphic description fully equal to Cooper's at his 
best, could not fail of being enchantingly interesting. 



THE HISTORIANS. 309 

He wrote ever with painstaking care ; he revised his 
sentences with all the fastidious care of a Macaulay. 
" His infirmity," says his biographer, " was a controlling 
influence, and is to be counted among the secrets of a 
manner which has been found at once so simple and so 
charming. He was compelled to prepare everything, 
down to the smallest details, in his memory, and to 
correct and fashion it all while it was still held there in 
silent suspense ; after which he wrote it down, by means 
of his noctograph, in the freest and boldest manner, 
without any opportunity really to change the phrase- 
ology as he went along, and with little power to alter 
or modify it afterwards. This, I doubt not, was among 
the principal causes of the strength, as well as of the 
grace, ease, and attractiveness of his style. It gave a 
life, a freshness, a freedom, both to his thoughts and to 
his mode of expressing them. . . . He was able to carry 
what was equal to sixty pages of printed matter in 
his memory for many days, correcting and finishing 
its style as he walked or rode or drove for his daily 
exercise." 

In his field Prescott has been equalled only by 
Cooper and surpassed only by Parkman. The defects 
of his style are chiefly those of excess. The writer of 
graphic pictorial description must ever career upon 
the verge of a precipice, and Prescott, like Cooper, 
sometimes fell into the depths of bombast and fine writ- 
ing. He delighted in battles and scenes of action, but 
he never, like Macaulay, sacrificed truth to rhetoric nor 
dragged in useless scenes to exhibit his mastery over 



310 AMERICAN LITERATURE. 

them. His power was chiefly that of a skilful narrator. 
Stripped of their pictorial effects, his histories would 
still be valuable, but they would lose the greater part 
of their charm. 

His Rank. — From the first publication of Ferdinand 
and Isabella until long after its author's death, Prescott 
was ranked both at home and abroad as the leader of 
American historians. In later days, however, this posi- 
tion has been sharply questioned. Much of Prescott's 
early popularity was won by the brilliancy of his themes 
and of his rhetoric. It is now evident that his works 
lack the broad horizon and the critical insight which 
characterize the histories of Bancroft and Motley. He 
has been surpassed, too, by Parkman in his own field of 
graphic delineation. Yet Prescott's place is still an 
enviable one. He was wise in his choice of subjects, 
and exhaustive in his accumulation of materials. He 
-had the tireless patience and the mania for exactness 
which are the distinctive marks of the modern histo- 
rian, and his judgment as to the genuineness and value 
of authorities was seldom at fault. He was lacking in 
analytical power and philosophical insight, and lacking 
this, his histories can never gain a place beside the great 
histories that are for all time ; yet with their accuracy 
and thoroughness and brilliancy it will indeed be long 
before they will be rewritten or forgotten. 

Suggested Readings. — "The Capture of Granada," Ferdi- 
nand and Isabella, Vol. L, ix.; " The Character of Isabella," ibid., 
Vol. II., xvi.; " The Battle of Otumba," The Conquest of Mexico, 
Book V., iv. 



THE HISTORIANS. 311 

2. George Bancroft (1800-1891). 

Life. — George Bancroft was born October 3, in 
Worcester, Massachusetts, where his father, a noted 
divine, had been stationed for over half a century. His 
youthful surroundings, which Were all of a literary and 
scholarly nature, early determined his future career. 
At the age of thirteen he entered Harvard College 
fully prepared, and upon his graduation four years later 
he went to Germany for post-graduate work. At the 
age of twenty he won the degree of Ph.D. from the 
University of Gottingen, having pursued with distinc- 
tion under the best scholars of the time the German, 
French, Italian, Arabic, and" Hebrew languages, Scrip- 
ture interpretation, history, philosophy, science, and 
antiquities. Two years later, having studied at Berlin 
and Heidelberg, and having made an extended tour 
through Europe, he returned to America, one of the 
most profound and finished scholars of his day. m 

Bancroft's first literary work, aside from a thin vol- 
ume of poems published in 1823, consisted of learned 
translations from the German and scholarly essays and 
reviews, but he soon devoted all of his energies to what 
was to become the chief work of his life, — an exhaustive 
study of the early history of the United States. The 
first volume of this monumental work appeared in 1834, 
and the final and complete edition of the twelve volumes 
was published just half a century later. 

Bancrofts History of the United States is a narrative 
and critical account of the Colonial and Revolutionary 



312 AMERICAN LITERATURE. 

periods of American history. The first three volumes 
consider the Colonial era, the next seven volumes treat 
of the Revolutionary period, dividing it into five epochs, 
while the last two volumes describe " the formation of 
the American Constitution." The history ends with 
the adoption of the Constitution by the States and the 
birth of the new nation. Within its limits the work 
aims to be exhaustive. Everywhere is manifest the 
author's ruling thought, which he declared to be a " fixed 
purpose to secure perfect accuracy in the relation of 
facts, even to their details and their coloring, and to 
keep truth clear from the clouds, however brilliant, of 
conjecture and tradition." To secure this accuracy, 
Bancroft examined, both in America and in Europe, 
vast collections of documents and state papers, many of 
which had never before been explored. The extent and 
thoroughness of this preliminary work is seldom mani- 
fest to the reader. There are no references nor foot- 
note^, and startling statements are often made with | 
seeming carelessness. But many a critic has found to 
his cost that the author could verify even his most trivial 
statements by a formidable array of authorities. 

Bancroft's history has now become the standard au- 
thority on the period of which it treats. Notwithstand- 
ing its slightly partisan nature, since it contends that 
the development of our government was according to 
the principles formulated by Jefferson and put into 
practice by Jackson, it is accepted with confidence by 
all parties. While it is not the final history of the 
epoch which it covers, this being as yet too near our 



THE HISTORIANS. 313 

own day for perfect perspective and unbiased judgments, 
its accurate characterizations of men and events, its broad 
scholarship, its critical studies of causes and effects,and its 
swift condensation of vast amounts of information, all 
combine to make it one of the world's great histories. 

His Rank. — Although Bancroft did a great amount 
of work as a compiler of historical collections, as editor 
of many valuable works, and as orator on numberless 
important occasions, his fame rests almost wholly upon 
his one great history. The literary merits of the work 
are very moderate. While its style is clear and definite, 
it is often labored and diffuse ; its author lacked the art 
of graphic narration so fully possessed by Prescott and 
Parkman : his pages are often " hard reading," but his 
scholarship, his analytical and critical powers, and his in- 
sistence upon perfect accuracy, more than compensate for 
the defects of his style. Taken for all in all, Bancroft 
is to be compared with no modern British historian save 
Froude, and with no American historian save Motley. 

Much of Bancroft's literary work was done amid the 
multifarious cares of public life. He was collector of 
the port of Boston in 1838, and in 1844 was an unsuc- 
cessful candidate for governor of Massachusetts. While 
Secretary of the Navy under President Polk, he estab- 
lished the Naval Academy at Annapolis, and as minister 
at various times to Great Britain, Prussia, the North 
German Confederation, and Germany, he made for him- 
self a brilliant record as a statesman and diplomatist. 

Suggested Reading. — The Battles of Lexington and Bunker 
Hill, Yol. 4, xiii. and xiv. 



314 AMERICAN LITERATURE. 

3. John Lothrop Motley (1814-1877). 

Life (by Holmes ; Correspondence of John Lothrop 
Motley, edited by G. W. Curtis). The life of Motley 
resembles in many of its details that of his illustrious 
fellow-historian, Bancroft. Entering Harvard College 
at the early age of thirteen, he completed his course 
with credit and immediately sailed for Europe, where 
he 1 passed the next two years at Gottingen and Berlin. 
Bancroft's choice of a life-work had been the ministry ; 
Motley chose the law; but both, preferring a literary 
life, early abandoned their professions. Bancroft's first 
literary venture had been a volume of poems ; Motley 
poured forth his youthful aspirations and visions in an 
incoherent, semi-autobiographical novel called Morton's 
Hope. Bancroft became the historian of the heroes 
of 1776 and their grand leader, Washington ; Motley 
chronicled the heroic rising of 1576 under an equally 
grand leader, William of Orange. Both men honored 
their nation by their brilliant achievements in the dip- 
lomatic field, and both are now universally recognized 
as historians of the very highest rank. 

The utter failure of Motley's first book did not 
destroy his ambition to enter the literary field as a nov- 
elist. In 1849, just ten years after his first venture, he 
published Merry Mount, a Romance of the Massachusetts 
Colony, a work of considerable merit. In its delinea- 
tion of character, invention of circumstances, and man- 
agement of plot, the book everywhere displays the 
crudeness of the amateur novelist : its strength lies in 



THE HISTORIANS. 315 

its fine descriptions of nature and in the vividness and 
truth of its historical setting. It was evident that Mot- 
ley had only to persevere in his work to become a nov- 
elist of power, but the young writer soon discovered 
where lay his greatest strength. Several historical 
studies contributed to the North American Review had 
met with a most flattering reception. He now " felt an 
inevitable impulse to write one particular history," the 
history of the rise and development of the Dutch 
Republic. "I had not," he wrote in 1850, "first to 
make up my mind to write a history and then cast about 
to take up a subject. My subject had taken me up, 
drawn me on, and absorbed me into itself. It was 
necessary for me, it seemed, to write the book ... 
and I had no inclination or interest to write any other." 
Several years of study and research on this side of 
the Atlantic convinced the historian that an accurate 
and valuable history could be written only in Europe, 
where he could have access to original documents and 
state papers. Accordingly, in 1851, he removed with 
his family to Germany, and during the next few years 
was buried in the rich archives of Berlin, Dresden, The 
Hague, and Brussels. The story of the historian's tire- 
less industry in the preparation of his materials should 
be read by every young person with literary aspirations. 
To realize the full extent of his labors, one should read 
his letter to F. H. Underwood, quoted in Holmes' Life 
of Motley, Ch. XIV. He read all possible works bearing 
on his theme. The learned Dutch archivist, van Prin- 
sterer, was amazed to find that the young historian had 



316 AMERICAN LITERATURE. 

read almost all the ponderous tomes in his volumi- 
nous collection. He ransacked the larger part of the 
libraries of Europe and explored the archives in most 
of the leading capitals. He had copyists in England, 
Spain, and The Hague, constantly engaged in transcrib- 
ing for his use rare documents and state papers. He 
spent months with his secretary in deciphering almost 
unreadable letters and manuscripts. During the five 
years that he passed in Europe writing his first work, 
he confessed that he made scarcely an acquaintance 
except with librarians. 

Histories of the Netherlands. — Motley's first work, 
The Rise of the Butch Republic, in three volumes, which 
brought the history of the revolt of the Netherlands 
down to the death of William the Silent, was published 
in London in 1856. Its success was instantaneous; it 
was republished in New York, Holland, Germany, and 
France, and its author rose at once from obscurity to 
a place among the standard historians. 

Motley started with the intention of writing an ex- 
haustive history of that "most remarkable epoch in 
human history, from the abdication of Charles Fifth to 
the Peace of Westphalia." The general title of this 
work was to be " The Eighty Years' War for Liberty," 
and the subject was to be considered in three parts 
corresponding to three epochs : The Rise of the Dutch 
Republic ; The United Netherlands bringing the narra- 
tive down to 1609 ; and the Thirty Years' War ending 
with the Peace of Westphalia. After finishing the first 
two epochs, Motley turned aside for a time to write 



THE HISTORIANS. 317 

what proved to be his last work, the full title of which 
is The Life and Death of John of Barneveld, Advocate 
of Holland^ with a View of the Primary Causes of the 
Thirty Years' War. "It is," comments Dr. Holmes, 
"an interlude, a pause between the acts which were 
to fill out the complete plan of ' The Eighty Years' 
Tragedy,' and of which the last act, the Thirty Years' 
War, remains unwritten." 

" My subject," wrote Motley in 1859, " is a very vast 
one, for the struggle of the United Provinces with Spain 
was one in which all the leading states of Europe were 
more or less involved. After the death of William the 
Silent the history assumes world-wide proportions. Thus 
the volume I am just about terminating [Vol. II. United 
Netherlands'] ... is almost as much English history as 
Dutch." The history of the Thirty Years' War would 
have been in reality the history of Europe during its 
most stirring epoch. The long illness and early death 
of Motley, who was of all others best equipped to 
grapple with this chaotic subject, certainly robbed the 
world's literature of what would have been a priceless 
possession. 

Motley's Rank. —(Richardson, I., 502-507; Whipple's 
Recollections of Eminent Men.) Like Prescott, Motley 
dealt with a most fascinating period, one that could be 
painted in brilliant colors. It was far enough removed 
for accurate perspective and everything was ready for a 
historian who could speak the last word concerning it. 
Motley united the breadth of mind and the analytical 
and critical qualities of Bancroft with the graphic style 



318 AMERICAN LITERATURE. 

and brilliant execution of Prescott. He excelled in 
studies of great historical personages. His pictures of 
William of Orange, of Philip II., of Granville, and the 
infamous Duke of Alva, of Elizabeth and the hundreds 
of other famous personages in all the courts of Europe, 
are drawn with all the accuracy and life of an old Dutch 
painting. Like Prescott, he could depict scenes of 
action with thrilling reality. His descriptions of the 
siege of Antwerp and of Haarlem, of the defence of 
Leyden, and of the famous episode of the Spanish 
Armada, are dramatic in their terrible intensity. 

It is now the universal opinion of critics that Motley 
is not only the leader of the American school of histo- 
rians, but the peer of the foremost British historians of 
the century. 

Suggested Reading. — Merry Mount, Vol. II., chs. viii. and 
xvi. ; u The Defence of Leyden," Rise of the Dutch Republic, Vol. 
II., Part 4, ch. 2. " Qneen Elizabeth," The United Netherlands, 
Ch. 41. 

4. Francis Paekman (1823-1893). 

Life. — (Vedcler's American Writers of To-day.} The 
early experiences of Francis Parkman were much the 
same as those of all the historians of the earlier group. 
He was a native of Massachusetts and a graduate of 
Harvard College ; after a short visit to Europe, taken 
at the advice of his physician, during the last year of 
his college course, he commenced the study of law, but 
after two years in the Harvard Law School he aban- 
doned it to devote his whole time to historical studies. 



THE HISTORIANS. 319 

Parkman's first inspiration came from Jared Sparks, 
Harvard's first professor of history. Even before leav- 
ing college he had determined upon his career, — he 
would write the history of the long struggle between 
France and England for the possession of North 
America. He did not have to choose a subject, — his 
subject rather chose him. Like Motley, he became so 
infatuated with his theme that he could devote himself 
to nothing else. From the very first he perceived that 
to make his work in any way authoritative he must study 
at first hand the character and life of the Indian who 
figures so conspicuously during the epoch, and collect 
both in America and France a vast mass of state papers 
and other authorities. 

Studying the Indian. — In the spring of 1846, Park- 
man, with a single companion, set out to study wild 
life in the Northwest, taking the vague trail from Fort 
Leavenworth up the Platte River to Fort Laramie, the 
route traversed fourteen years previously by Captain 
Bonneville, whose experiences were recorded by Irving. 
From Fort Laramie he went westward to the Black 
Hills, where he fell in with a tribe of Sioux Indians on 
their summer hunting expedition. For the next few 
weeks he lived as an Indian, sharing in all the details of 
savage life. He dwelt in their wigwams and partook of 
their coarse food ; he joined in their buffalo hunts, sat 
at their councils, and studied closely their customs and 
peculiarities and ways of thinking. But the hardships 
which he was forced to undergo told fearfully upon him. 
A serious disease, which his rough life and barbarous 



320 AMERICAN LITERATURE. 

food constantly aggravated, fastened itself upon him. 
For weeks he was dangerously ill, but his iron will kept 
him in the saddle. 

In 1847 he published an account of his adventures 
under the title of The Oregon Trail, a book that has all 
the thrill and fascination of a novel by Scott or Cooper. 
No better description has ever been written of the wild 
life of the West in the days when the buffalo blackened 
the plains and the Indian pursued his savage life un- 
touched by civilization. The book belongs with Irving's 
Wild Western series, which deal with substantially the 
same period and territory. 

Parkman's next volume, The Conspiracy of Pontiac 
(1851), made deep draughts on its author's intimate 
knowledge of Indian life and character. In it he aimed 
"to portray the American forest and the American 
Indian at the period when both received their final 
doom." The author visited every, scene described, and, 
to secure absolute accuracy of statement, examined, 
according to his own words, " letters, journals, reports, 
and despatches scattered among numerous public offices 
in Europe and America," which, "when brought to- 
gether, amounted to about thirty-four hundred pages." 
Out of this dry and lifeless mass Parkman constructed 
a work which reads like a romance. 

France and England in North America. — Parkman 
now commenced upon the work of his life, — the series 
of narratives that was to cover the struggle of two great 
nations for a continent. It was a field wholly unex- 
plored ; it was far enough removed for accurate perspec- 



THE HISTORIANS. 321 

tive ; it had sharply defined limits ; its historian could 
approach it without prejudice ; and, more than all, 
it was a field of vast importance. The far-reaching 
problems that were settled by the struggle are thus pre- 
sented by the historian : 

" The most momentous and far-reaching question ever brought to 
issue on this continent was : Shall France remain here or shall she 
not ? If, by diplomacy or war, she had preserved but the half, or 
the less than the half, of her American possessions, then a barrier 
would have been set to the spread of the English-speaking races ; 
there would have been no Revolutionary A¥ar ; and, for a long 
time at least, no Independence. . . . The Seven Years' War 
made England what she is. It crippled the commerce of her rival, 
ruined France in two continents, and blighted her as a colonial 
power. It gave England the control of the seas and the mastery 
of North America and India; made her the first of the commercial 
nations, and prepared that vast colonial system that has planted 
New Englands in every quarter of the globe. And while it made 
England what she is, it supplied to the United States the indispen- 
sable condition of their greatness, if not their national existence." 
— Preface to Montcalm and Wolfe. 

The general title adopted by Parkman for his work 
was France and England in North America : a Series of 
Historical Narratives. The successive volumes are : 
1. Pioneers of France in the New World, in two parts, 
the first treating of " The Huguenots in Florida," and 
the second of " Samuel de Champlain " ; 2. The Jesuits 
in North America ; 3. La Salle ; or the Discovery of the 
Great West; 4. The Old RSgime in Canada; 5. Count 
Frontenac ; or New France under Louis XIV. ; 6. A 
Half Century of Conflict ; 7. Montcalm and Wolfe. The 
Conspiracy of Pontiac and the Indian Wars after the Con- 
quest of Canada, the full title of Parkman's second book, 



322 AMERICAN LITERATURE. 

while not included under the general title, follows natu- 
rally as the eighth volume of the series. 

Parkman's Style and Rank. — (Richardson, L, 482- 
494.) The chief value of Parkman's histories lies in 
their accuracy and their narrative power. The historian 
knew his field perfectly, and, like Motley and Bancroft, 
he spared no pains to verify his every statement. He 
had all the brilliancy of Prescott's style and more. He 
chose his points of view with rare skill, and so graphi- 
cally did he describe what he saw that the reader lays 
down his narrative with a feeling almost of personal 
participation in the events he has read. One may seek 
in vain for histories more full of picturesque detail and 
dramatic episode. Parkman, unlike Bancroft and Mot- 
ley, seldom attempted analysis or philosophic criticism. 
His histories are what he intended them to be, " a series 
of historical narratives," perfectly accurate in statement 
and background, thoroughly covering the epoch with 
which they deal, yet histories which might easily be 
" read by mistake as romances." 

While Parkman can never take rank with the great 
narrative and critical historians like Froude and Motley, 
he has one advantage over all other historians of the 
century, — his work can never be done again. A his- 
torian with a broader outlook and a more tireless 
patience than Motley's may arise to write again the 
history of the Netherlands ; Bancroft's work without 
doubt will be done again, but while future historians 
may increase our documentar}^ knowledge of the French 
and English wars, they can never bring to their work 



THE HISTORIANS. 323 

Parkman's preparation. He did his work at precisely 
the right time. The Indian of The Oregon Trail was 
substantially the Indian of the Seven Years' War, but 
twenty-five years later he had disappeared forever. 

Difficulties Attending His Work. — No estimate of 
Parkman's work can be complete that neglects to dwell 
upon the difficulties with which he had to contend in 
the preparation of his histories. He returned from his 
summer in the West with shattered health. His eyes 
became affected so that, like Prescott, he was nearly 
blind throughout the rest of his life. " For about three 
years," he wrote in the preface to The Conspiracy of 
Pontiac, "the light of day was insupportable and any 
attempt at reading or writing completely debarred. 
Under these circumstances the task of sifting the ma- 
terials and composing the work was begun and finished. 
The papers were repeatedly read aloud by an amanu- 
ensis, copious notes and extracts were made, and the 
narrative written down from my dictation." Through- 
out his life he could command for work only the small- 
est portion of his time. From 1853 to 1863 he could 
not work at all, even the rustle of a newspaper being 
unbearable, but by carefully using every available mo- 
ment of his life he accomplished to the full the dream 
of his youth. His works are not only great histories of 
a memorable era, they are monuments to their author's 
patient perseverance and unconquerable will. 

Suggested Reading. — The Oregon Trail, Chs. XIY., XV. ; 
The Jesuits in North America, or Montcalm and Wolfe. 



XXIII. 
THE ANTISLAVERY LEADERS. 

The intellectual and humanitarian movement which 
reached its flood in New England during the conjunc- 
tion of Emerson, Ripley, Alcott, and their followers, 
spent its ebbing energies in the antislavery movement 
preceding the Civil War. As the bright theories of a 
new society founded on the principle of universal 
brotherhood became more and more untenable, the re- 
formers began to turn their attention to society as it 
actually existed and to insist upon the correction of the 
most obvious evils. Of all these evils, that of slavery 
was most glaring. Some of the extremists, like John 
Brown, who started from Concord on his desperate 
errand in 1858, were for the instant and unconditional 
abolition of slavery by any means ; others of the group, 
like Theodore Parker, waged at great personal peril a 
fierce war of denunciation ; while others, like Emerson, 
used more quiet methods. 

On its literary and intellectual side the antislavery 
movement was brought to a crisis by a comparatively 
small group of determined workers. Of this group 
Garrison was the leader, Sumner the statesman, Phillips 
the orator, Mrs. Stowe the novelist, and Whittier the 
poet. The work of this determined little band closed 
the period. 

324 



THE ANTISL AVERY LEADERS. 325 

1. William Lloyd Garrison (1805-1879). — ( Wil- 
liam Lloyd Garrison : the Story of his Life told by his 
Children ; The Moral Crusader : a Biographical LJssay, 
by Goldwin Smith ; Garrison and his Times, by Oliver 
Johnson ; Life, by A. H. Grimke.) When, in 1831, 
Garrison started his Liberator in Boston he had not, to 
his knowledge, a sympathizer in the whole nation. The 
antislavery principle had not anywhere one outspoken 
defender. All political parties either advocated the evil 
or compromised with it ; the Constitution of the United 
States, in the words of Webster, " recognized slavery 
and gave it solemn guarantees"; even the Church 
was silent. Against this widespread and deeply rooted 
institution Garrison set himself single-handed. He was 
but twenty-four years of age, uneducated and penniless; 
" his office was an obscure hole ; his only visible helper 
a negro boy," but his demand was the immediate aboli- 
tion of slavery. He sent broadcast over the land his 
heroic challenge : " I will be as harsh as truth and as 
uncompromising as justice. ... I will not equivocate, 
I will not excuse, I will not retreat a single inch, and I 
will be heard." He poured into his work all the bound- 
less zeal of the fanatic. He was willing to sacrifice 
everything, even the Union, to gain his single point. 
He denounced the Church for its inactivity, and branded 
the Constitution as " a league with death and a covenant 
with hell." 

There could be but one result of words poured out in 
such terrible earnestness. The deadness of the public 
mind was soon fully aroused to life. Mobs assaulted 



326 AMERICAN LITERATURE. 

Garrison everywhere he appeared. In 1835 he was 
dragged with a rope about his body through the streets 
of Boston. Many who had cared little for the freedom 
of the slaves now rallied about Garrison to defend the 
freedom of speech and the freedom of the press. The 
contest became widespread and bitter beyond expres- 
sion. 

The writings of Garrison, although very voluminous, 
would not in themselves give their author literary 
distinction. They were simply a means to an end, a 
by-product from a career devoted fixedly to the accom- 
plishment of a great purpose. His ringing orations and 
scathing paragraphs are now as dead as the issue that 
called them forth. Yet Garrison will ever hold a high 
place in the history of American thought and litera- 
ture. While it is yet too early to estimate the true 
extent of his influence on the spirit of his times, it can 
with safety be said that this influence was widespread 
and vital. 

2. Wendell Phillips (1811-1884). — (Life and 
Times of Wendell Phillips, by G. L. Austin ; Life, by 
Charles Martyn.) During Holmes' senior year at Har- 
vard, Sumner, Motley, and Phillips were undergraduates 
in the college, the last two being in the same class. Like 
most young graduates of their day, all three, upon leav- 
ing Harvard, looked to the law as a life-work, but Sum- 
ner, although he became an able writer on the theory of 
law and at one time a lecturer in the law school, soon 
drifted away from his profession; Motley during his 
two years at the Cambridge school read vastly more 






THE ANTISLAVERY LEADERS. 327 

history than law; and Phillips, after a brilliant law 
practice of several years, deliberately abandoned his 
profession to cast his lot with the despised abolition- 
ists. The sight of Garrison dragged by an angry mob 
past the very "cradle of liberty," had filled him with 
furions indignation. He had wealth, position, educa- 
tion, brilliant legal attainments, oratorical power in an 
unusual degree, and he had resolved on the spot to, 
devote them all to this downtrodden cause. An oppor- 
tunity was soon at hand. In December, 1837, after 
violent opposition, the friends of free speech gained the 
use of Faneuil Hall for a public meeting to take notice 
of the death of Love joy, an abolitionist editor of Alton, 
Illinois, who had been killed by a mob while defending 
his press. But the meeting threatened to end in worse 
than failure. The hall became crowded with an excited 
mob that was soon in full possession. The leader de- 
clared, in an inflammatory speech, that Lovejoy had died 
as the fool dies. The moment was Phillips' opportunity. 
Pouring out a flood of mingled scorn, sarcasm, and 
denunciation, he gained the attention of the meeting, 
and soon with his resistless eloquence conquered all 
opposition. From this moment he became the recog- 
nized orator of abolitionism. His fierce appeals were 
heard in every city, and time and again he con- 
quered and captivated audiences which had gathered 
with the express purpose of doing him bodily harm. 

As an orator Phillips was what Henry Clay would 
have been with a Harvard education. To Clay's fire 
and magnetism he joined Everett's rhetorical art and 



328 AMERICAN LITERATURE. 

marvellous vocabulary. As a master of sarcasm and 
invective he can be compared only to John Randolph of 
Roanoke, and as a fierce delighter in opposition he may 
be compared to Webster. But Phillips' orations, like 
those of Clay, are hard to read. Examined in cold blood, 
his sentences often seem harsh and even coarse. The 
fire of his invective was fed at times with unseemly 
material and he often depended upon his consummate 
oratorical skill to carry sentences that will hardly pass 
the searching criticism of the reader. 

During his last years Phillips kept alive his fame as 
an orator with his popular lectures on " Toussant 
l'Ouverture" and "The Lost Arts." 

3. Charles Sumner (1811-1874). — (Memoirs and 
Letters of Charles Sumner, E. L. Pierce; The Scholar 
in Politics, A. H. Grimke ; Life, Anna L. Dawes.) 
In the national councils the antislavery cause had 
a redoubtable champion in Charles Sumner, senator 
from Massachusetts from 1851 until his death. With 
his commanding personality, vast learning, comprehen- 
sive and accurate mind, and uncompromising spirit, he 
was one of the most conspicuous figures of the epoch. 
Fame had sought him early. He was scarcely twenty- 
six when Carlyle, noting the admiring throngs that 
attended his first tour through Europe, dubbed him 
" Popularity Sumner." In 1845 he had won instant 
fame as an orator with his celebrated speech on " The 
True Grandeur of Nations," delivered before the 
authorities of the city of Boston on July 4. During 
the same year he had allied himself with the antislavery 






THE ANTISLAVERY LEADERS. 329 

party, defending his position in several powerful ora- 
tions. Sumner's work in the Senate was brilliant and 
effective. So thoroughly did he devote himself to his 
cause that his orations, which fill twelve volumes, are 
almost a complete "history of the antislavery move- 
ment in its connection with national politics." 

To his friends Sumner was the embodiment of gener- 
osity, refinement, and good-fellowship, but to his ene- 
mies he seemed selfish, domineering, and even boorish. 
So intensely was he hated by the pro-slavery element, 
that in 1856, after his powerful oration on the wrongs of 
Kansas, his enemies determined to silence him, employ- 
ing for that purpose one Preston S. Brooks of South 
Carolina, from whose hands he received, while sitting at 
his desk at the Senate, injuries that enfeebled him for 
several years and indirectly caused his death. But Sum- 
ner's inflexible integrity, and his intolerance of injustice 
and of sordid aims, were acknowledged even by his foes. 

As an orator Sumner was logical and convincing. 
While he had not the tact and fire of Phillips, his ora- 
tions were, nevertheless, impetuous and overwhelming. 
They forced conviction, point by point, by a culmina- 
tion of arguments seemingly unanswerable. The power 
of his orations has not departed with the occasions that 
called them forth. They are still full of life and 
beauty. The reader is surprised at the wealth of schol- 
arly allusion, and the brilliancy, at times, of the rhetoric. 
The st}^le is stately and finished. Many of the ora- 
tions, strongly in contrast with those of Phillips, rise at 
times almost to sublimity. On the whole, the orations 



330 AMERICAN LITERATURE. 

of Sumner are an addition to American literature only 

less important than the work of Webster, Choate, and 

Everett. 

Required Reading. — "The True Grandeur of Nations," or 
" The Crime against Kansas." 

4. Harriet Beecher Stowe (b. 1812). — {Life, by 
C. E. Stowe.) For two generations the Beecher family 
figured prominently in the history of American litera- 
ture. During the first half of the century Dr. Lyman 
Beecher, a preacher of unusual force and effectiveness, 
was the leader in the attack upon Unitarianism. His 
son, Henry Ward Beecher (1813-1887), became the 
most famous of American pulpit divines, and not to 
mention others of the family, his daughter, Harriet, 
lived to write the most popular and effective novel in 
the language. 

It seems well-nigh impossible to view the life of Har- 
riet Beecher Stowe save from the standpoint of her one 
great achievement. She wrote other stories as thrilling, 
others much more perfect in literary art; she made 
studies of the Yankee character and dialect that are 
worthy of comparison with those of Lowell; she made 
sketches of life and character that are irresistibly 
humorous and pathetic, and she wrote several poems 
and hymns that are of surpassing sweetness, but to the 
world she is simply the author of Uncle Tom's Cabin. 
Other facts seem superfluous. The story of her life 
must lead quickly to this one major fact and dwell 
there. 

Uncle Tom's Cabin is one of those literary phenomena 



THE ANTISL AVERY LEADERS. 331 

that come unheralded and unaccounted for. Its author 
had received an education befitting the daughter of a 
New England minister, had taught for a time in the 
schools, and when, in 1832, her father became president 
of Lane Seminary, had removed with him to Ohio, where 
some years later she was married to Calvin E. Stowe, 
a professor in the seminary. In 1849 she published 
a promising volume of short character studies entitled 
The Mayflower ; or Sketches of the Descendants of the 
Pilgrims ; and two years later, as a result of this vol- 
ume, she received a check for $100 from the editor of 
The National Era, an antislavery paper in Washington, 
with the request that she write as much of a story of 
slave life as she could for the money. Thus supplied 
with a subject, she began to write. She had never been 
an ardent abolitionist, though she sympathized warmly 
with the antislavery workers ; she had seen something 
of slave life in Kentucky, but she knew little of slavery 
as it actually existed in the cotton States of the South. 
The head of a large household with narrow means, she 
had scant time to devote to literary work. She had 
intended to write only a short tale of slave life, but the 
work grew, month by month, until in a year and a half 
it had become a complete novel. 

Uncle Tom's Cabin was published in book form in 
Boston in 1852. The story of its success almost ex- 
ceeds belief. Seventy thousand copies were disposed of 
before the critics could write a word ; 80,000 more 
were ordered faster than the publishers could turn 
them from their presses. In 1855 the Edinburgh Eeview 



332 AMERICAN LITERATURE. 

declared that " by the end of November 1852, 150,000 
copies had been sold in America, and in September of 
that year the London publishers furnished to one house 
10,000 copies per day for about four weeks." 

It was translated into the French (three versions), 
German (fourteen versions), Danish, Dutch, Swedish, 
Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, Welsh, Russian, Polish, 
Hungarian, Wendish, Wallachian, Romanic, Arabic, and 
Armenian, and it has since appeared in Chinese, Turkish, 
Japanese, and many other tongues. 

Its influence on the times can hardly be estimated. 
It did more, perhaps, to precipitate the war than did 
any other single influence. In vain did its enemies 
parody its thrilling, sometimes sensational, scenes ; in 
vain did they argue that it pictured the exception 
and not the rule, that such monsters as Simon Legree 
existed only in the rarest instances. The masses in the 
North, believing it an accurate. picture of daily scenes in 
the South, read its pages with horror and growing indig- 
nation. From a literary standpoint the novel has many 
defects. As a work of art it is not to be compared with 
many of its author's later productions. It often exhibits 
hasty work ; its situations are sometimes melodramatic 
and its characters conventional ; but its very defects 
increased its popularity, which has not for a moment 
waned. It is now the most widely read novel in the 
language, and to very many foreigners it is almost the 
sole representative of American fiction. 

Tales of New England Life. — After publishing 
another antislavery novel, Dred : a Tale of the Great 



THE ANTISLAVERY LEADERS. 333 

Dismal Swamp, which was soon obscured in the fierce 
light of Uncle Toms Cabin, Mrs. Stowe turned her 
attention to the field of her first choice, — studies of New 
England village life. Of these the best are The Minis- 
Urs Wooing (1859), The Pearl of Orrs Island (1862), 
Oldtown Folks (1869), and Sam Lawsoris Fireside 
Stories (1871)- Had she written nothing else, these 
would still give her a high place among American 
novelists. Full of genuine humor and skilful charac- 
terization, intensely faithful to the region and the time 
which they portray, and as sweet and gentle of tone as 
the tales of Jane Austen or Maria Edgeworth, they form 
a priceless addition to our literature. In Sam Lawson 
Mrs. Stowe added one more real creation to the gallery 
of fiction, — a Yankee as droll and shrewd as Hosea 
Biglow himself. 

Required Reading. — Uncle Tom's Cabin; Oldtown Folks. 

5. John Greenleaf Whittier (1807-1892). — 

" The Poet of New England. His genius drew its nourishment from 
her soil, his pages are the mirror of her outward nature, and the 
strong utterance of her inward life." — Parkman. 

" Taken for all in all, Whittier, ' our bard and prophet best- 
beloved,' that purely American minstrel, so virginal and so impas- 
sioned, at once the man of peace and the poet militant, is the Sir 
Galahad of American song. He has read the hearts of his own people, 
and chanted their emotions, and powerfully affected their convictions. 
His lyrics of freedom and reform, in his own justified language, were 
'words wrung from the Nation's heart, forged at white heat.' Long- 
fellow's national poems, with all their finish, cannot rival the natural 
art of Whittier's. They lack the glow, the earnestness, the intense 
characterization, of such pieces as ' Randolph of Roanoke,' ' Ichabod,' 
and • The Lost Occasion.' " — Stedman. 



334 AMERICAN LITERATURE. 

Life. — (The authorized biography of Whittier is 
Samuel T. Pickard's Life and Letters of John Qreen- 
leaf Whittier. Excellent studies of the poet's life and 
writings have been written by F. H. Underwood, by 
W. S. Kennedy, and by W. J. Linton. See also Stod- 
dard's Homes and Haunts of our Elder Poets, Miss Mit- 
ford's Recollections, and Gris wold's Home Life of Great 
Authors.} Whittier was born in Haverhill, Massachu- 
setts, Dec. 17, 1807. His father, the tiller of a rocky 
little farm burdened with debt, was a fine specimen of 
the New England yeoman of the early days, — God- 5 
fearing, hardworking, intensely practical ; his mother, a 
typical housewife of the old school, not only attended 
to her kitchen and dairy, but spun and wove and made 
all the garments for her household. There was little in 
the boy's early life and surroundings to develop poetic 
taste. There were no luxuries and few holidays. 
Bryant, Emerson, Longfellow, Holmes, and Lowell 
had been the culmination of long lines of scholarly 
men ; had grown up amid refining influences with 
books for daily companions, but Whittier had no 
family traditions save those of poverty and toil, and 
his life until early manhood was passed in the dreary 
round of farm labor. A few weeks of district school 
in the winter gave him his early education. Of his 
literary advantages he has left an interesting account. 

" We had only about twenty volumes of books, most of them 
the journals of .pioneer ministers in our society. Our only annual 
was an almanac. I was early fond of reading and now and then 
heard of a book of biography or travel and walked a mile to borrow 



THE ANTISL AVERY LEADERS. 335 

it. AVhen I was fourteen years old my first schoolmaster, Joshua 
Coffin, the able, eccentric historian of Newbury, brought with him 
to our house a volume of Burns' poems from which he read, greatly 
to my delight. I begged him to leave the book with me and set 
myself to the task of mastering the glossary of the Scotch dialect 
!at its close. This was about the first poetry I had ever read — 
with the exception of the Bible, of which I had been a close stu- 
dent — and it had a lasting influence on me. I began to make 
rhymes myself and to imagine stories and adventures. In fact, 
I lived a sort of dual life in the world of fancy as well as in the 
world of fact about me." 

It was Burns, then, who awakened the slumbering 
genius of the boy. One of these early poems, a crude 
and callow production, fell into the hands of Garrison, 
who was then editor of the Newbury port Free Press, 
and by great good fortune it was published. Others 
followed and Garrison, becoming interested in the young 
poet, visited him at the farm at Haverhill, and gave 
him visions of an education. After six months in 
Haverhill Academy, where he supported himself by 
making shoes, Whittier went to Boston as a writer for 
The American Manufacturer, and soon afterwards he 
became editor of The Hartford Review, of Connecticut, 
where he remained for several years. 

Legends of New England. — Whittier began his liter- 
ary career under the impression that there was a rich 
mine of poetry and romance in the history and traditions 
of the Indians, — a delusion that was widespread during 
tHe early years of the century. Eastburn's Yamoyden, 
which appeared in 1820, had been for a time the most 
popular work in American literature. This poem, and 
Dr. Palfrey's review of it which had been the direct 



336 AMERICAN LITERATURE. 

cause of the novel Hobomoh by Lydia Maria Francis 
(Child), furnished inspiration to a throng of romantic 
young poets, of which number Whittier was one. His 
first published volume, Legends of New England, in 
Prose and Verse (1831), a series of tales which he had 
gathered about many a winter hearthstone in his native 
town, was followed in 1836 by Mogg Megone, a long 
poetical effort after the manner of Yamoyden, and in 
1848 by The Bridal of Pennacook. In later years 
Whittier smiled at much of this early work. Of Mogg 
Megone he wrote : " Looking at it at the present time it 
suggests the idea of a big Indian in his war paint strut- 
ting about in Sir Walter Scott's plaid." The Bridal 
of Pennacook contains one gem, " The Merrimac," but 
aside from this and its descriptions of New England 
scenery, it has little value. 

Voices of Freedom. — Whittier's literary career may be 
divided into two distinct periods, the first characterized 
by his work as an antislavery advocate and the second 
by his ballads and lyrics of New England rural life. 
His early work in the field of Indian legend was not 
significant ; it had fallen from the press unheeded, 
partly because of its lack of commanding strength, 
but more because of its author's out-spoken position on 
the slavery question. 

Whittier inherited with his Quaker blood what he 
declared to be 

" A hate of tyranny intense, 
And hearty in its vehemence 
As if my brother's pain and sorrow were my own." 



THE ANTISLAVERY LEADERS. 337 

With his gentle nature and boundless respect for the 
rights of others, he looked upon human slavery with 
unfeigned horror. It was but natural, then, when his 
earliest friend, Garrison, began his crusade against the 
evil, that Whittier should join him with all his heart. 
In 1833 he became one of the secretaries of the first 
National Antislavery Convention. In 1837 he was in 
the office of the American Antislavery Society in New 
York, and the next year he edited The Pennsylvania 
Freeman in Philadelphia, where his office was sacked 
and burned by a mob. He lectured constantly, often 
narrowly escaping personal violence from mobs, and, 
until the war was over, ceased not to pour out a torrent 
of indignant verse which he scattered through the news- 
papers of the land. In 1849 he made his first collec- 
tion of these lyrics under the title Voices of Freedom, in 
which he gave vent to his soul without a thought of 
art or, indeed, of anything save his burning message. 
The verses became war cries " that stir the blood," in 
the words of Bryant, "like a trumpet calling to battle." 
Few poems in the language have more vigor and fire. 
Their influence in moulding the spirit of the North, 
while not to be compared with that exerted by Uncle 
Toms Cabin, was, nevertheless, an important one. 

The close of this first period in Whittier's literary 
life is marked by the appearance of the stirring lyric, 
" Laus Deo," written on hearing the bells ring out the 
news of the passage of the Constitutional amendment 
prohibiting slavery, a poem Hebraic in its exultation. 
How could mere words express more of fierce joy ? 



338 AMERICAN LITERATURE. 

" It is done ! 

Clang of bell and roar of gun 
Send the tidings up and down. 

How the belfries rock and reel ! 

How the great guns, peal on peal, 
Fling the joy from town to town ! 

" Loud and long 

Lift the old exulting song ; 
Sing with Miriam by the sea, — 

He has cast the mighty down ; 

Horse and rider sink and drown ; 
' He has triumphed gloriously ! ' 

" Ring and swing, 
Bells of joy ! On morning's wing 

Send the song of praise abroad ! 
With a sound of broken chains 
Tell the nations that He reigns, 

Who alone is Lord and God ! " 

Required Reading. — " The Virginia Slave Mother's Lament," 
" Ichabod," " Laus Deo," " The Pine Tree," " Our State." 

"The Heart of New England. " — Although, during 
the antislavery period of his career, Whittier's best 
gifts, as he expressed it, were laid on the shrine of 
freedom, he found time, nevertheless, to write many 
songs and ballads of New England life and legend; but 
when the war was over he gave his whole heart to this 
one work. Few poets of any land have clung to their 
native soil with a love more real and vital. He could 
say from his heart: 

" Then ask not why to those bleak hills 
I cling, as clings the tufted moss, 



THE ANTISLAVERY LEADERS. 339 

To bear the winter's lingering chills, 

The mocking spring's perpetual loss. 
I dream of lands where summer smiles, 
And soft winds blow from spicy isles ; 
But scarce could Ceylon's breath of flowers be sweet 
Could I not feel thy soil, New England, at my feet." 

What Scott and Burns were to Scotland, Whittier 
was to New England. He touched her life at every 
point. For the cold facts concerning her history and 
people one may go to Palfrey, but for her heart and 
soul one must read the poems of Whittier. In them 
one sees not only a perfect picture of stream and moun- 
tain, of wildflower and forest bird, but loving studies 
of that sturdy people who have been the bone and sinew 
of American grandeur. 

1. Idyls. — Snow Bound, a Winter Idyl, which stands 
as the most characteristic of all Whittier's work, is a 
series of " Flemish pictures " drawn lovingly' from 
memories of his own early years. Besides being, as 
Burroughs declares it, " the most faithful picture of our 
Northern winter that has yet been put into poetry," it is 
a perfect portrayal of the inner home life of rural New 
England. As a work of art Snow Bound is well-nigh 
flawless, in every way worthy of comparison with such 
gems as " The Cotter's Saturday Night " and The 
Deserted Village. 

Suggestions for Studying "Snow Bound. 1 ' — What is an idyl? 
What other idyls can you mention? Note that the poem opens 
abruptly as though it were a ballad. What is gained by this 
device? Are there any needless strokes in the picture of the 
storm and its approach ? Is everything true to nature ? Do snow 



340 AMERICAN LITERATURE. 

storms come in a similar way in your latitude ? Compare the lines 
describing the storm with Emerson's " Snow Storm." Which seems 
to you the more vigorous V Make an outline of the poem noting 
each step in its development. Note the unities, — first, of time ; 
second, of place; third, of action. Compare in this respect with 
The Biglow Papers and Evangeline. To which does the poet devote 
the most attention, — the picture of a New England storm, or of 
a New England rural home? In what respects does the poem 
resemble "The Cotter's Saturday Night?" Note the skill with 
which Whittier introduces his characterizations, using the storm 
as a background. How did Goldsmith introduce his characteriza- 
tions in The Deserted Village ? Compare the schoolmasters in the 
two poems. Which one of the talkers about the fire did not give 
reminiscences? Note the varied pictures, skilfully introduced, of 
New England life and nature at all seasons. What facts for a 
biography of Whittier could be gathered from this poem ? Does 
he neglect to make known his position on the antislavery question ? 
His Quaker training ? Note the paucity of Whit tier's early library. 
What touches show the sweet beauty of the poet's character ? De- 
scribe a few paintings that might be made from the descriptions in 
Snow Bound. 

Among Whittier's other New England idyls drawn 
with loving care from memories of early days, the best 
known are " The Barefoot Boy," " In School Days," 
" Telling the Bees," the Songs of Labor, " Among the 
Hills," and "Maud Muller." 

Required Reading. — "The Barefoot Boy," "Telling the 
Bees," "Among the Hills," and "Maud Muller." 

2. Ballads. — As a ballad writer Whittier has had no 
equal among American poets, — not even in Longfel- 
low. His ballads, which make up a surprisingly large 
part of his work, possess every requisite, being " narra- 
tive in substance, lyrical in form, traditional in origin," 



THE ANTISLAVERT LEADERS. 341 

and, withal, vivid and rapid in execution. Their sub- 
jects are nearly all from early New England history and 
tradition. Some of them, like " Pentucket," " The Norse- 
men," and " The Funeral Tree of the Sokokis," deal 
with the very earliest times in New England; others, 
like " The Garrison of Cape Ann," " Cobbler Keezar's 
Vision," and " The Double-headed Snake of Newbury," 
touch upon the popular superstitions of the early days. 
In "Cassandra Southwick," "The Exiles," u The King's 
Missive," " How the Women Went from Dover," and 
many others, the "poet chose a subject very near his 
heart, — the early persecutions of the Quakers; while 
in many more, like " Mary Garvin," " John Underbill," 
" The Witch's Daughter," " The Prophecy of Samuel 
Sewall," " Parson Avery's Swan Song," " The Palatine," 
"Abraham Davenport," and "Amy Wentworth," he 
dealt with the varied scenes and incidents of early 
Puritan life. So thoroughly did Whittier weave into 
these ballads the life and episodes of Colonial days that 
from them might be constructed almost a complete out- 
line of early New England history. 

Required Reading. — " The Funeral Tree of the Sokokis," 
" Cassandra Southwick," " The Witch's Daughter," " Abraham 
Davenport." 

3. Nature Lyrics. — (See Burroughs' " Nature and the 
Poets " in Pepaeton.) As a poet of nature Whittier is 
surpassed only by Bryant. All of his New England 
poems are full of touches which show his deep love for 
the mountains and woods and fields. He loved the very 
soil of his native valley and he made of it classic 



342 AMERICAN LITERATURE. 

ground. The Merrimac was to him what the Afton 
was to Burns, and what the Wye and the Duddon were 
to Wordsworth. It ripples through many of his sweetest 
poems. The mountains, too, whose child it is, were also 
dear to Whittier's heart. Bryant exulted in the broad 
arches of the forest, and in the vast sweep of the prai- 
ries, but Whittier delighted in the mountains with their 
varied moods, their shifting lights and shadows, their 
" cloudy mantles," and their vast forms " against the 
blue walls of the sky." By a comparatively few exqui- 
site lyrics he made himself the acknowledged laureate of 
the White Hills of New England, as Hawthorne is their 
romancer and Starr King their historian. Whittier has 
also, like Longfellow, sung surpassingly well of the 
Northern Atlantic coast, as was befitting a poet who 
in childhood during nights of storm 

" heard the roar 
Of ocean on his wintry shore," 

and like Bryant he could paint with true tints the North- 
ern Indian Summer. There are few autumn pictures in 
our literature more perfect than the prelude to "Among 
the Hills," " The Lumbermen," " The Huskers," " The 
Corn Song," and " The Pumpkin." 

" Whittier's poems of Nature are characterized by poetic ele- 
ments which are not common among descriptive poets. They are 
not enumerative, like the landscapes that form the backgrounds of 
Scott's metrical romances, but suggestive; for though there is an 
abundance of form and color in them, their value doesmot depend 
upon these qualities so much as upon the luminous atmosphere in 
which they are steeped. They are more than picturesque, in that 



THE ANTISLAVERY LEADERS. 343 

they reveal the personality of their painter — a personality that, 
changing with the moods they awaken, is always tender and 
thoughtful, grateful for the glimpses of loveliness they disclose, 
and consoled with the spiritual truth they teach. 11 — Stoddard. 

Required Reading. — "TheMerrimac," "Our River," "Moun- 
tain Pictures," " Sunset on Bearcamp," Prelude to " Among the 
Hills," " The Tent on the Beach," " Hampton Beach," « The Lum- 
bermen," " The Corn Song." 

Whittier's Rank. — (Stedman, Ch. IV. ; Richardson, 
II., 173-186.) Whittier's rank as a poet must depend 
more and more upon his lyrical studies of his native New 
England. His songs of freedom, notwithstanding their 
vigor, are constantly losing their interest as the great 
events, of which they are a part, fade into the past ; but 
his idyls and songs of humble life are as secure in their 
immortality as are those of Burns. Whittier won his 
place among American poets not in spite of his want of 
early culture, but rather on account of it. A broad edu- 
cation would have smoothed and refined his verses, but 
it would also have taken away much of the simple 
idyllic beauty which is now their chief charm. His 
were " native wood-notes wild," often crude in form, 
awkward in rhyme, and homely in thought, but never- 
theless intensely original and sincere. He was near the 
soil, he knew by heart the " simple annals " of humble 
life, and he poured out without a thought of books the 
songs that came to his lips. Thus, though he covered 
minutely only one section, he is recognized both at home 
and abroad as the most national of our poets, a singer 
distinctively a product of American soil. 

Whittier never married. After the death of his 



344 AMERICAN LITERATURE. 

mother he made his home with his sister Elizabeth, 
a rare woman, who, herself a poet, was thoroughly in 
sympathy with his work. After her death, in 1864, he 
lived for the rest of his life with relatives at Oak Knoll, 
near Danvers, Massachusetts, where he died Sept. 7, 
1892, the last, save Holmes, of the great singers of the 
Augustan period of American literature. 



XXIV. 

THE DIFFUSIVE PERIOD. 

1861 . 

From the Civil War to the Present Time. 

Although the Civil War closed, in all its phases, the 
great intellectual and humanitarian movement that was 
the distinctive feature of the second creative period, 
and although it made a violent break in American civil 
history, it, nevertheless, made no sudden change in the 
character of the literary product, or in the centres of 
literary production. The date 1861 is chosen as the 
close of the period simply for convenience. It is evi- 
dent that the second creative period, which had an 
unmistakable individuality, ended at some time long 
before the close of the century. The sharply defined 
group of which Emerson, Hawthorne, Longfellow, 
Whittier, Holmes, and Lowell were the leaders, all, 
save Poe and Prescott, lived to see the Civil War, 
and many lived and wrote until late in the century ; 
but in 1895 only Mrs. Stowe and a few minor writers 
remained. Then, too, the more prominent writers of 
the present day had achieved literary distinction long 
before the Avar opened. It being, therefore, impossible 
to determine the exact limits of the period, the year 

345 



346 AMERICAN LITERATURE. 

1861, which marks a notable epoch in the development of 
the American spirit, has usually been chosen as its close. 
Songs and Lyrics of the War. — The chief literary 
results of the war were a few notable martial lyrics, 
composed for the most part during the heat of the 
struggle, and the orations and addresses of Abraham 
Lincoln. The fame of several poets rests almost 
wholly on their war poems. Among such may be 
mentioned Henry Howard Brownell (1820-1872), 
called by Holmes "Our Battle Laureate," who wrote, 
from the full knowledge of a participator, two stirring 
poems, — " The Bay Fight," describing the battle of 
Mobile Bay, and " The River Fight," describing the 
passage of the forts near New Orleans ; and For- 
seyth Wilson (1837-1867), whose "The Old Ser- 
geant" was at one time wonderfully popular. In the 
same connection may be mentioned Julia Ward 
Howe (b. 1819), who, although she has published 
several books of verse and an appreciative Life of 
Margaret Fuller, will be remembered chiefly on account 
of her " Battle Hymn of the Republic." A few other 
famous lyrics of the war, like Whittier's " Barbara 
Frietchie," T. B. Read's " Sheridan's Ride," Stedman's 
"Cavalry Song," Francis M. Finch's "The Blue and 
the Gray," and the anonymous " The Confederate 
Flag," pronounced by Richardson to be "the gem of 
the Southern poetry of the Civil War," deserve a 
passing mention. Of songs, too, those genuine bits of 
passion that burst from the heart of every great war, 
the civil struggle, like the Revolution, produced its 



THE DIFFUSIVE PERIOD. 347 

full share. In the North, George Frederick Root 
with his " Battle Cry of Freedom " and " Tramp, 
Tramp, Tramp, the Boys are Marching," and Walter 
Kittredge with his " Tenting on the Old Camp 
Ground," furnished song and words for the men at 
the front ; while in the South, James R. Randall with 
" Maryland, my Maryland," called b}^ one writer " the 
Marseillaise of the Confederate cause," and Albert Pike 
with " Dixie," fired with zeal the Confederate heart. 

Abraham Lincoln (1809-1865). — (See Lowell's 
My Study Windows.') In prose the chief productions 
inspired by the Avar were, without question, two or 
three addresses delivered by President Lincoln. His 
address at the dedication of the National Cemetery 
on the battlefield of Gettysburg, Nov. 19, 1863, 
and his second inaugural address, delivered March 4, 
1865, stand with the great orations of the century. 
" A man of humble birth and ungainly manners, of 
little culture beyond what his own genius supplied," 
Lincoln was, in the words of Lowell, " the wisest 
statesman and most pregnant speaker of [his] genera- 
tion." His oratory is in marked contrast with that 
of Webster and Everett and the early school of ora- 
tors; it has no studied periods and elaborately wrought 
climaxes ; it has little of ornament or of inspiration ; it 
is simply the words of a man whose heart was deeply 
stirred, who, speaking as Whittier sang, without a 
thought of art or of effect, poured out words that 
are unsurpassed in simple beauty, dignity, and even 
grandeur. Emerson, in his essay on " Eloquence," 



348 AMERICAN LITERATURE. 

wrote : " I believe it to be true that when any orator 

at the bar or in the Senate rises in his- thought he 

descends in his language, that is, when he rises to 

any height of thought or passion, he comes down to 

a language level with the ear of all his audience. It 

is the merit of John Brown and of Abraham Lincoln 

— one at Charlestown, one at Gettysburg — in the 

two best specimens of eloquence we have had in this 

country." 

Lincoln's orations are short when compared with 

the labored efforts of a Webster or a Choate, and 

they were not written with literary intent, yet few 

productions in American literature are more certain 

of immortality. 

Required Reading. — Lincoln's Gettysburg Address, and his 
second Inaugural Address. 

Histories of the War. — Since the close of the war 
numerous histories of the struggle have been written. 
For the Northern side the story has been told by 
Horace Greeley, John W. Draper, Benson J. Lossing, . 
and Vice-President Wilson; on the Southern side by 
Jefferson Davis, A. H. Stephens, and E. A. Pollard, but 
none of the histories is by any means a final one. The 
authors were too near the epoch described and too much 
influenced by bitter memories and prejudices. The 
final history of the struggle will not be possible for a 
century at least. Its historian, however, will find a 
wonderful mass of material awaiting his hand. Frank 
Moore's Rebellion Record, a collection of facts and doc- 
uments on a vast scale ; the Memoirs of Grant, Sher- 



THE DIFFUSIVE PERIOD. 349 

man, Sheridan, and other generals ; Nicolay and Hay's 
exhaustive Life of Lincoln, — one of the best biogra- 
phies of the century, — and the histories that have been 
published of numerous regiments and divisions, form a 
mass of raw material such as few historians of any 
epoch have ever had at command. 

The Diffusive Period. — The years since the war are 
too near for perfect perspective. The candle held in 
hand seems as powerful as the Drummond light in the 
distance, and the same principle holds true in literature. 
Time is the only infallible critic. Poe's Literati and 
Griswold's Poets of America are monuments to the 
worthlessness of contemporary criticism, and with such 
monuments in view it behooves the literary historian to 
move carefully, to be blinded by no contemporary fame, 
however brilliant, and to beware of prophecy however 
alluring the temptation. The literary history of the 
past thirty years, however voluminous it may be in the 
works of a century hence, as written to-day must neces- 
sarily be brief. In writing it we have attempted to deal 
only with writers whose place has become somewhat 
established, and with books that have survived the 
ordeal of at least a decade. 

What the critics of a century hence will determine 
upon as the dominating characteristic of the present 
period can only be conjectured, but as viewed from a 
contemporary standpoint it seems a period of diffusion. 
The vastness and variety of the literary product at the 
present time almost exceed belief. Books and maga- 
zines on every topic and in every tongue pour in floods 



350 AMERICAN LITERATURE. 

from the press. " Tones and tendencies " all seem 
toward confusion. American literature is no longer 
local either in spirit or in place of production. While 
Boston has not lost any of her old literary spirit, New 
York, having surpassed her through mere size and mere 
superiority of numbers, is now the chief literary centre. 
Literature has become a commodity, and New York is 
the commercial metropolis of America. And yet litera- 
ture is by no means confined to New York. Every city 
across the Continent is now a literary centre ; the books 
that overrun the news-stands reflect the hues of every 
soil. 

Amid all this host of book-makers there is none that 
measures up to the stature of Longfellow and Haw- 
thorne, and the other leaders of the early school. It is 
a period of minor poets and novelists. The spirit of 
the age is materialistic rather than idealistic. The vast 
strides in science, invention, and enterprise have reacted 
on the literary product. Novels and poems, having 
become mere commercial commodities, are now manu- 
factured in cold blood at specified times, at specified 
rates, and while fierce competition has greatly raised 
the standard of mere literary art, it has not breathed 
into the product that indefinable something, the presence 
of which makes a work immortal. 

The writings of the period may be considered under 
three heads: 1. The Later Poets; 2. The Later Novel- 
ists ; and 3. Miscellaneous Writers. 



XXV. 

THE LATER POETS. 
I. THE NEW YOKK GROUP. 

During the middle years of the century, while the 
powerful voices of Emerson, Longfellow, Whittier, 
Holmes, and Lowell were leading the chorus of New 
England song, a secondary group of younger singers, 
many of them natives of the Middle States, gathered 
in New York City about the stalwart figure of Bayard 
Taylor. The movement was a significant one. As the 
poets of the older school became silent, one by one, the 
less powerful voices of Taylor and Whitman, and of 
the little transplanted group of New England singers, 
— Stoddard, Stedman, and Aldrich, — began more and 
more to be heard, until New York in time became the 
poetical centre, and these poets the leaders of Ameri- 
can song. 

Among the older members of the group were the four 
Pennsylvanians, — Read, Boker, Leland, and Taylor. Of 
these Thomas Buchanan Read (1822-1872), a land- 
scape painter of high rank, is remembered in literature 
chiefly from his spirited lyric, " Sheridan's Ride," and 
his " Closing Scene," a poem about which clings all the 
melancholy beauty of the Indian Summer, which it de- 
scribes. George Henry Boker (1823-1890) is almost 

351 



352 AMERICAN LITERATURE. 

the only American who has succeeded with that most diffi- 
cult of literary productions, the drama. His Calynos, 
Anne Boleyn, and Francesco, da Rimini possess the rarely 
combined merits of stage adaptability and high literary 
art. Boker's lyrical work is marked by a sweetness of 
verbal melody and a lilting, tripping movement very 
pleasing to the popular ear. Such songs as " The Lan- 
cer's Song" and the " Dirge of a Sailor," and such lyrics 
as " On Board the Cumberland," " A Ballad of Sir John 
Franklin," and " The Ivory Carver" show a power over 
words and an intensity of imagination rare indeed among 
American poets. Charles Godfrey Lelakd (b. 1824), 
although the author of several books on the Gipsy race 
and language, concerning which he is the standard au- 
thority, is best known from his Hans Breitman Ballads 
written in the dialect of the Pennsylvania Dutch. His 
" Hans Breitman gif a "Barty," the opening poem of 
this collection, has had a marvellous popularity. 

Required Reading. — Read's "The Closing Scene"; Boker's 
" The Dirge of a Sailor " and " The Ivory Carver " ; Leland's 
" Hans Breitman gif a Barty." 

I. Bayard Taylor (1825-1878). 

(See Life and Letters of Bayard Taylor, by Marie 
Hansen Taylor and Horace E. Scudder.) In Bayard 
Taylor we find for the first time an American poet of 
high rank whose genius was nurtured and developed 
outside of the New England environment. He stands 
as a strong evidence for the statement made earlier in 
the work that the Pennsylvania Quakers differed but 



THE LATER POETS. 353 

little, either in spirit or in surroundings, from their 
Puritan neighbors and persecutors. (See p. 53.) An 
interesting parallel might be drawn between Taylor 
and Whittier. Both came from humble Quaker homes, 
both passed their early years in the dreary round of 
farm life, and both, revolting in early manhood from 
the ancestral career, secured a meagre education and 
entered upon journalism as a life-work. But a spirit 
of wandering, of which Whittier had not a trace, was 
upon Taylor, to drive his life into channels widely dif- 
ferent from those chosen by the elder poet. 

Taylor's boyhood visions of European travel were 
realized before he had completed his nineteenth year. 
By the aid of a few dollars earned by the publication 
of a thin volume of youthful verse entitled Ximena, 
and circulated among his friends, the young printing- 
office apprentice was enabled to visit New York where, 
with letters from Griswold, who had taken a fancy to 
some verses contributed to Gf-raham's Magazine, he 
obtained aid and encouragement from Willis, Horace 
Greeley, and others. With scarce one hundred and 
forty dollars in money and the promise of scanty com- 
pensation for letters written from Europe, Taylor began 
his wanderings. During the two years that he was 
abroad he "travelled on foot," according to his own 
statement, " upwards of three thousand miles in Ger- 
many, Switzerland, Italy, and France." The strictness 
of his economy during this time may be judged from the 
fact that the entire journey cost less than five hundred 
dollars, nearly all of which was earned upon the road. 
2a 



354 AMERICAN LITERATURE. 

Views Afoot, a classic among books of travel, appeared 
in 1846. Its charm lies in its freshness and novelty. 
Taylor, like Irving and Willis and Longfellow, had 
approached Europe with a feeling almost of reverence. 
To the youthful eyes of all these writers everything 
was new and full of intense and romantic interest. 
A holiday spirit and the zeal and zest of youth breathe 
alike from Irving's early English sketches, from Pencil- 
lings by the Way, Outre Mer, and Views Afoot. All are 
records of poetical pilgrimages, but none is more poeti- 
cal than Views Afoot. All of Taylor's descriptions are 
full of poetic touches. The cliffs at Fairhead were to 
him like " Niagara Falls petrified " ; " the white houses 
of Gmunden sank down to the water's edge like a flock 
of ducks," and the valley of the Arno was to him "a 
vast sea, for a dense blue mist covered the level sur- 
face through which the domes of Florence rose up like 
a craggy island, while the thousands of scattered villas 
resembled ships, with spread sails, afloat on its surface." 
The book is a gallery of pictures of familiar and unfamil- 
iar Europe. In his wanderings on foot from city to city 
through the "by-ways of Europe," Taylor saw much 
that the average tourist, following the beaten track, 
never encounters. His book became instantly popular; 
it carried Taylor's name everywhere and placed him at 
the head of the younger writers of the metropolis. 

Required Reading. — Views Afoot, Ch. I. " The Voyage " 
(compare with Irving's Essay in The Sketch Book) ; Ch. VI. " Some 
of the ' Sights ' of London " (compare with Irving's " Westminster 
Abbey"); Ch. XXII. "Vienna"; Ch. XL. "Rome"; Ch. XLVI. 
" A Glimpse of Normandy." 



THE LATER POETS. 355 

His Travels. — Taylor, like Ulysses, lias 

" become a name 
For always wandering with a hungry heart." 

Scarcely was he settled in his new field of labor in New 
York City when he was sent by The Tribune to the 
newly discovered gold fields of California. 1846< views 
Two years later he started on a journey t^ L W1(J 
of fifty thousand miles through Egypt and rado - 
Central Africa, India, China, and Japan, ney to Central 
In 1856, he visited Sweden, Norway, and 1854 ' The 
Lapland. He was secretary of Legation f^?// e ^{^ e 
in Russia in 1862, and was American 1855. A Visit 

. , to India, China, 

minister at Berlin at the time of his death and Japan. 

-j 070 1858. Northern 

111 ±5/5. Travel. 

All of Taylor's iournevings were poeti- ^ 85 ^- Travel * 

J J J & r in Greece and 

cal pilgrimages. His later books of travel, Rome - 

_ .5 , n , , . . 1859-1862. At 

while less exuberant and less romantic than Home and 

. n .. 1 , . Abroad. 

Views Afoot, are, nevertheless, the jour- 1867 Colorado. 
nals of a poet on his wanderings. Their ^v. By-ways 

L of Europe. 

style is simple and straightforward, yet it 1872. Travels 

, , . , . , in Arabia. 

communicates by some subtle process the 1874 Egypt 
author's boundless enthusiasm and his de- andIceland - 
light in strange scenes and adventures. Taylor is an 
ideal travelling companion. He knows what is worth 
seeing and he enlivens the way with tale and jest and 
merry song. 

As a Poet. — But the passion and dream of Taylor's 
life was poetry. His widespread fame as a wanderer 
rather annoyed than pleased him, and the flood of prose 



356 AMERICAN LITERATURE. 

that flowed for years from his tireless pen was regarded 
by him only as a means of support. His one literary am- 
bition was to reach the heights of poesy, to be numbered 
among the great bards of the world, and he all but 
attained to his exalted ideal. His first poetic period, 
like that of most poets, was distinctively lyrical. He 
wrote, in every key and in every measure, lyrics that 
in coloring and theme are cosmopolitan. Few poets 
of any land have gathered sweets from fields more 
numerous and diverse. One can trace his trail from 
his first journey to his last by the lyrics that he dropped 
at frequent intervals. In his maturer years, having 
wandered in all lands, and having "drunk life to the 
lees," he returned to where life began; wrote sweet 
idyls and pastorals of his native state, and from his 
rich experience attempted, what he meant should be" 
his master works, odes and dramatic poems with themes 
of the loftiest kind. But he had misjudged his powers. 
The poems which are the ripe fruit of his life and on j 
which he staked his fame as a poet, while they are 
noble additions to the literature of the world, lack the 
crowning touch that makes a work immortal. None 
realized this better than Taylor himself, and he died, 
his friends tell us, a disappointed man. It was his fate 
to come within sight of the land of immortality and yet 
be doomed never to enter its bounds. 

Romances and Lyrics. — During the purely lyrical 
period of Taylor's life he produced his 

Rhymes of L J t . 

Travel; Ballads most characteristic and pleasing work. In 

and other 

Poems. 1848. a v few of his earlier lyrics, like " Moan, ye 



THE LATER POETS. 357 

Wild Winds," written after the death of A Book of 

Romances, 

the wife of his youth, " Metempsychosis of Lyrics and 

J r J Songs. 1851. 

the Pine," " Hylas," "Proposal," " Eupho- Poemsofthe 

,, , . , . . n , -r, n .-i Orient. 1854. 

non, and in his magnificent Poems of the The Poet > 8 

Orient, he reached poetic heights that have Journal - 1862 - 

been seldom attained by American lyrists. The most 

remarkable series of his lyrics is, perhaps, his Poems of 

the Orient, poured out in rapid succession during his 

months in Egypt, Syria, and the far East. Taylor was 

indeed "a western Asiatic." Beneath his new-world 

exterior he had 

" The rich, voluptuous soul of Eastern land, 
Impassioned, tender, calm, serenely sad." 

He caught at once the true spirit of the Orient, — its 
languorous beauty, its passion and its dreams. "He 
captured," says Stoddard, " the poetic secret of the East 
as no English- writing poet but Byron has." His passion- 
ate "Bedouin Song" is worthy of comparison with the 
best of Byron's Eastern lyrics or with such a gem as 
Shelley's " Lines to an Indian Air." Where in Ameri- 
can literature are there lines so full of passion and fire ? 

" From the Desert I come to thee 
On a stallion shod with fire ; 
And the winds are left behind 

In the speed of my desire. 
Under thy window I stand, 

And the midnight hears my cry : 
I love thee, I love but thee, 
With a love that shall not die 
Till the sun grows cold, 
And the stars are old, 
' And the leaves of the Judgment Book unfold!" 



358 AMERICAN LITERATURE. 

Required Reading. — "Metempsychosis of the Pine," "Pro- 
posal," " Euphorion," " Autumn Pictures " (compare with Bryant's 
"Death of the Flowers"). From Poems of the Orient: "The Poet 
in the East," " Desert Hymn to the Sun," " Nubia," " Bedouin 
Song " (compare with Shelley's " Lines to an Indian Air "), " To a 
Persian Boy," " On the Sea," " L'imvoi." 

Home Pastorals and Ballads. — The second important 
division of Taylor's poems consists of his Pennsylvania 
pastorals and idyls. Like Whittier, the poet had sprung 
from the soil, and though he wandered under all suns till 
he became the most complete cosmopolitan of his gener- 
ation, he never forgot his origin. Again and again he 
wandered back to his native scenes, and at last he built 
him a home in the town of his birth, where he might pass 
the ripe years of his old age. His bucolics, like those in 
Home Pastorals, with their faithful pictures of the rural 
seasons, remind one strongly of Whittier, and his idyls of 
home life, such as "The Quaker Widow," "The Holly 
Tree," and " The Old Pennsylvania Farmer," might 
have been written by the New England " Quaker 
Bard." Indeed it is not difficult to conceive how 
Taylor, had he been content to spend his life in quiet 
amid the scenes of his youth, might have done for 
Pennsylvania what Whittier did for New England. 

Taylor's narrative poem Lars ; a Pastoral of Norway, 
his most carefully wrought and symmetrical production, 
has in it a strength and sweetness that make it worthy 
of comparison with Longfellow's Evangeline. 

Required Reading. — " August." (Note autobiographical 
touches.) "The Quaker Widow," "The Old Pennsylvania 
Farmer." 



THE LATER POETS. 359 

Last Poems. — During the last years of his life 
Taylor composed four notable dramatic poems. No 
American poet has attempted themes more 

i i m i i -n The Picture of 

lofty. Into these works Taylor threw all St. John. 1869. 

of his broad culture and experience; his f h h e € ' G^dl^mi 

knowledge of humanity, and his mastery The Prophet: 

of literary art. They are the highest 18 ? 4 - 

f. ., A . . -, . , , . Prince Deuka- 

expressions ol the American mind in their u on .• a Lyrical 

department, which is that of the "loftiest 

or religious division of the drama, the highest form of 

literature." 

His Versatility. — In the extent and variety of his 
powers Taylor resembled Holmes. He entered almost 
every field of literary production and always with credit. 
He wrote four novels : Hannah Thurston, John God- 
frey's Fortune, The Story of Kennet, and Joseph and his 
Friend, — all of them valuable additions to the best de- 
partment of American Action. The Story of Kennet, 
" a true idyl of Pennsylvania country life in the early 
prime," is its author's best prose work. He also won 
laurels as a translator, his version of Goethe's Faust, 
made in the original metres, being universally con- 
sidered the best English translation of that great drama. 

Taylor's mind was retentive and electric. " Nothing 
that he learned," says his friend Stedman, " was for- 
gotten, and he learned without effort. After a single 
reading he knew a poem by heart, and he could repeat 
whole pages of his favorite authors ; and there was little 
that he did not read or see." His industry was tireless. 
Notwithstanding his extensive travels, his endless "hack 



360 AMERICAN LITERATURE. 

work " as a member of the staff of a city daily, his almost 
nightly lectures, he found time during his literary life 
of thirty-four years to write thirty-seven volumes. No 
constitution could long endure such a draft upon it. 
He died of overwork in the prime of his years and the 
fulness of his powers. 

His Character and Rank. — (Stedman, 396-434 ; Rich- 
ardson, I., 439-441, II., 246-248.) Taylor, like Longfel- 
low and Whittier, was a poet whose life and character 
were as sweet as his songs. " To think of him," saysk 
Stedman, "is to recall a person larger in make ana 
magnanimity than the common sort; a man of buoy- 
ancy, hopefulness, sweetness of temper, loyal, shrinking 
from contention, yet ready to do battle for a principle 
or in the just cause of a friend ; stainless in morals, and 
of an honesty so natural that he could not be surprised 
into an untruth or the commission of a mean act." 

As a poet he stands without question at the head 
of the later school of lyrists, and he ranks only a little 
below the four great poets of the Golden Age of Ameri- 
can song. 

2. Richard Henry Stoddard (b. 1825). 

Intimately connected with the name of Bayard Taylor: 
is that of his life-long friend, R. H. Stoddard. The tw& 
Songs of Sum- names go as naturallv together as those of 

mer. 1856. & J & 

Life of Hum- Drake and Halleck. Born the same year, 
i860. in widely differing environments, they first 

Bell." 1862 S met each other in 1848, when both were 



THE LATER POETS. 361 

struggling for literary recognition in the Abraham Lin- 
then unliterary atmosphere of New York, uan 'ode. ^mi' 
and from this time they became an un- Putnam the 

L , , J , , Brave. 1869. 

told strength to each other. Stoddard The Book of the 
had come from Hingham, Massachusetts, EasU 1869, 
where he had passed his childhood within ir^Lamp^ 6 ^ 
sound of the sea, whose salt was in his (prose) ' 
blood. He had removed to New York in 1835, where, 
after a short school life, he had settled down to the task 
!of bread-winning by the hardest of physical toil. Dur- 
ing the early years of his friendship with Taylor, he 
passed his days in an iron foundry, and only once a 
week could the two enthusiasts find time to discuss 
together in their attic rooms their dreams and enthusi- 
asms. Taylor was the "intellectual stimulant" that 
brought to life the powers of the young iron worker, 
who already burned with aspiration to be a poet. 
In those days "I had no friend," declares Stoddard, 
j" except himself, no companionship but that of books 
and my own thoughts." The friendship was a golden 
one for Taylor also. Despite his uncongenial environ- 
ment, and his lack of a systematic education, Stoddard 
had managed to read widely and well ; he was already 
a master of poetical technique, an authority on the 
English poets, and a judge of poetic merit, whose 
decisions were seldom at fault. The two poets were 
complements of each other ; what one lacked the other 
could supply. Taylor, in his "Proem Dedicatory" to 
Poems of the Orient has exquisitely described the 
domain held in fee by each: 






362 AMERICAN LITERATURE. 

" You strain your ears to catch the harmonies 

That in some finer region have their birth ; 
I turn, despairing, from pursuit of these, 

And seek to learn the native tongue of Earth. 
In ' Fancy's tropic clime ' your castle stands, 

A shining miracle of rarest art ; 
I pitch my tent upon the naked sands, 
And the tall palm, that plumes the orient lands, 

Can with its beauty satisfy my heart." 

Stoddard's first volume of poems appeared in 1849. 
He succeeded in selling one copy, after which he de- 
stroyed the rest of the edition. During the same year 
he was married to Miss Elizabeth Barstow, a poet 
and novelist of more than ordinary merit. The union 
has been an ideal one, reminding one, in its perfect 
felicity and helpfulness, of that between Robert Brown- 
ing and Elizabeth Barrett. Three years after his first 
volume Stoddard published another, and in 1856 he put 
forth his Songs of Summer, which contains much of his 
strongest work, and which gave him at once a secure 
place as a poet. 

From 1853 to 1870 Stoddard found employment in 
the New York Custom House, where, like Charles Lamb 
in the East India House, he filled volumes with figures, 
when he should have been filling other volumes with 
the creations of his art. But literature, even a quarter 
of a century ago, was safely pursued only as an avoca- 
tion. From 1860 to 1870 he varied his custom-house 
work by reviewing books for the New York World, and 
in the latter year he resigned his position to devote his 
whole time to literary pursuits. Since 1880 he has been 
literary critic for the New York Mail and Express. 



THE LATER POETS. 363 

As a Poet. — Stoddard belongs to the purely imagina- 
tive school. He has a passionate love of the beautiful 
that reminds one of his early master, Keats. His poems 
are spontaneous and impassioned, yet in them all there 
is not a single inartistic or faulty line. Like Poe and 
Aldrich, he has pruned his work with remorseless care. 
He has the rare gift of being able to apply his broad 
critical powers to his own work as if it were the pro- 
duction of another, and he has not hesitated many times 
to reject that which a less conscientious poet would have 
left unquestioned. 

Stoddard's poems may be divided roughly into two 
groups : his scholarly and deeply imaginative poems, 
like " The Search for Persephone," " The Children of 
Isis," " History," and " Dies Natalis Christi," and his 
more purely emotional lyrics. It is from these heart- 
poems that he is most widely known as a poet, and it 
will be through them that he will longest keep his name 
from oblivion. Lyrics like " The Flight of Youth," 
"At Rest," "Out of the Deeps," and "The Dead" find 
an echo in every heart. " The King's Bell," a rhymed 
poem of more than eleven hundred lines, his longest 
poetical effort, is fully equal to the best of Taylor's 
narrative poems. 

Required Reading. — "Hymn to the Sea," "An Old Song 
Revised," "The Flight of Youth," "Birds," "The Two Brides," 
" Irreparable," " At Rest," " Out of the Deeps," " The Dead," 
"Pain in Autumn," "Up in the Trees," "Songs Unsung," and 
" The Search for Persephone." 

As a Prose Writer. — Stoddard's numerous prose arti- 



364 AMERICAN LITERATURE. 

cles, which are scattered through the magazines and 
newspapers of half a century, and which have never 
been collected, consist chiefly of criticism and literary 
biography. His wide reading in all fields of literature, 
and his intimate personal acquaintance with most of the 
men who have made American literature, give his words 
always a peculiar weight and authority. His most faith- 
ful and characteristic prose work is, perhaps, his study 
of the life of Edgar Allan Poe. 

3. Edmund Clarence Stedman (b. 1833). 

Like Stoddard, whose name is so often mentioned 
with his, Stedman is not a native of the city with whose 
Poems, Lyric life he has become so completely identified. 
"^idyllic. He wag bom in jjartford, Connecticut, and 
Rip Van Winkle received his education at Yale. At the age 

and his Wonder- ° 

ful Nap. 1870. of twenty-four, after having edited for a 

TJi p Vi c to v i h ii 

Poets. 1875. time the Norwich, Connecticut, Tribune 
?thZ th poems and and later the Winsted Herald, he went to 
1877 • New York, drawn thither, like so many of 

Lyrics and 

Idyls. 1879. the metropolitan group of authors, by the 
ica. *i886. m< great magnet, journalism. His next ten 
The Nature and vears W ere years of struggle. He wrote 
Poetry. 1892. hi s sou \ m t poems which he contributed 
to the magazines, supporting himself meanwhile by work 
of every description for the city dailies. In 1861 and 
1862 he was war correspondent for the New York World, 
When, in 1860, he published his first significant volume, 
Poems, Lyric and Idyllic, his name had already begun 
to be mentioned with those of his seniors in the poetic 



THE LATER POETS. 365 

field, — Taylor and Boker and Stoddard, — but his war 
lyrics brought him into universal notice. So rapidly 
did his fame as a versatile and graceful poet increase, 
that in 1864, to secure means and leisure for independ- 
ent literary work, he abandoned journalism and became 
a broker in Wall Street. The tandem, business and 
literature, went smoothly together. He was enabled to 
purchase an elegant city home, which he filled with 
a wealth of books and beauty, and which he soon made 
the literary centre of New York. In 1883 he lost the 
most of his wealth, but by hard work he has since 
made good his losses. He is now in the fulness of his 
strength and literary activity, the most conspicuous 
figure in the best American literary circles. 

As a Poet. — (Richardson, II., 256-265, Vedder's 
American Writers of To-day.') Stedman, Stoddard, and 
Aldrich are the leaders of what may be called the later 
school of lyrists. Their common characteristics are 
their fastidious care for the technique of their art, their 
graceful, polished lines, and their ability to deal with 
subjects which many poets would consider too trivial 
or commonplace for poetic use. Their knowledge of 
literature is deep and broad, and they apply their 
scholarship and critical powers to the improvement of 
their own Avork. As a result, one may search in vain 
through the works of all these poets for a single inele- 
gant or slovenly line. 

Stedman, like Aldrich, though in a less degree, may 
be called a poet of the artificial. He has written a few 
idyls with consummate skill, but his best and most char- 



366 AMERICAN LITERATURE. 

acteristic poems are those dealing with various phases 
of artificial life. He is not a poet of nature ; he is 
seldom spontaneous ; he is, save at rare intervals, intel- 
lectual and self-conscious. The most spontaneous of 
his lyrics are his songs, like " The Wedding Day," and 
some of his more thoughtful and serious poems, likd 
" The Undiscovered Country " and " The Discoverer.'! 
The latter, which seems to me the loftiest expression of 
Stedman's lyric muse, is in all respects worthy of ai 
place beside Taylor's "Euphorion." To these poemsj 
which in their perfect art seem as artless and simple as- 
wild flowers, may be added the idyls of New England 
life inspired by memories of earlier days. " The Door- 
step " is worthy of comparison even with Lowell's "The 
Courtin' " ; " Country Sleighing " is a faultless picture, 
and " The Freshet," " The Heart of New England," and 
" The Lord's Day Gale " might have been written b4 
Whittier. Stedman's strength, however, lies in wha^ 
might be paradoxically called idyls of city life. He| 
has made himself the laureate of New York. "Peterj 
Stuyvesant's New Year's Call," in which the redoubt- 
able Hollander has a dream of his city's future glory, 
"Fuit Ilium," suggested by the destruction of an old| 
colonial mansion, and " Pan in Wall Street," 4 M;he one 
classic inspiration of the great money market," stand 
at the head of these lyrics of the town. 

By far the greater portion of Stedman's poetical work 
is made up of his ballads and lyrics of the war, his 
poems on contemporary themes, and his occasional! 
poems. In the first division fall the pre-Rebellion> 



THE LATER POETS. 367 

ballad, " How Old Brown Took Harper's Ferry," with 
its ringing stanza of prophecy destined to be fulfilled; 
" Alice of Monmouth : an Idyl of the Great War," a 
long poem full of thrilling pictures of battle, touching 
episodes, and charming descriptions of quiet scenes in 
New Jersey life and landscape ; and several stirring 
lyrics like "Fort Summer," and "Wanted — A Man." 
The spirited " Cavalry Song," a little lyric of three 
stanzas in Part IX. of "Alice of Monmouth," is probably 
the best known of Stedman's poems. Much of Sted- 
man's time for poetic composition has been spent in the 
construction of purely ephemeral work, — the celebration 
of contemporary events of passing importance. Produc- 
tions like " The Diamond Wedding," a long poem cele- 
brating a brilliant society event, and " The Prince's 
Ball," describing the reception of the Prince of Wales 
by New York society, though full of wit and satire and 
very popular in their day, are now well-nigh forgotten. 
Among his occasional poems, which are many, and which 
cover a wide range, may be mentioned " Gettysburg," 
read in 1871 at the annual meeting of the Army of the 
Potomac, " The Dartmouth Ode," 1873, and the schol- 
arly ode, " Corda Concordia," read at the 1882 session 
of the Concord School of Philosophy. His long poem 
" Hawthorne," read in 1877 before the Harvard Phi Beta 
Kappa, may be taken as his loftiest and most sustained 
poetical address. Its portrayal of Hawthorne's life and 
character reveal the poet hand in hand with the critic. 
To Stedman, Hawthorne was " the one New Englander " 
and the one modern portrayer of the human heart. 



368 AMERICAN LITERATURE. 

" None save he in our own times so laid 

His summons on man's spirit ; none save he, 
Whether the light thereof was clear or clouded, 
Thus on his canvas fixed the human soul, 
The thoughts of mystery, 

In deep hearts by this mortal guise enshrouded 
Wild hearts that like the church bells ring and toll." 

Required Reading. — Early Poems: "In Bohemia" and 
" Penelope." (Note the influence of Tennyson's " Recollections of 
the Arabian Nights" and "Ulysses.") Thoughtful and serious: 
"The Undiscovered Country" and "The Discoverer" (cf. Taylor's 
"Euphorion"). Songs and Idyls: "The Wedding Day," "The 
Doorstep," " Country Sleighing," " The Lord's Day Gale." City 
Lyrics : " Peter Stuyvesant's New Year's Call," " Fuit Ilium," " Pan 
in Wall Street." War Ballads : " How Old Brown Took Harper's 
Ferry," " Alice of Monmouth." Occasional: "Hawthorne." 

As a Critic. — Stedman stands after Lowell at the 
head of American literary critics. He has chosen a 
difficult field of labor, — the consideration of what, 
remembering the long vista of English literature, one 
might call the contemporary English-writing poets. No 
criticism calls for riper judgment, wider scholarship, and 
more complete catholicity, than that which attempts to 
give absolute values to contemporary products. That 
Stedman has succeeded in this difficult field is in itself 
almost a complete testimonial to his powers as a critic. 

The two volumes, The Victorian Poets and The Poets 
of America, cover that rich period of minor song which 
opened both in England and America in 1837. The 
reader will seek long for more charming books of criti- 
cism. They are not dry, lifeless estimates of authors 
and books ; they are in themselves creations, full of rare 



THE LATER POETS. 369 

characterization, subtle analysis, epigram, gems of poetry 
from the best hands. The reader may not always agree 
with the critic, as in his estimate, for instance, of Whit- 
man, but he cannot fail to admire the brilliancy of his 
treatment and the thoroughness of his mastery of the 
subject. The Poets of America is by all means the 
most complete and scholarly study that has yet been 
made of the American Parnassus, and it is thus a book 
indispensable to the student of American literature. 
Stedman's latest critical work, The Nature and Elements 
of Poetry, a book which with wide horizon and deep 
scholarship considers the best poetical products of all 
nations and times and the laws governing their pro- 
duction, is in its field one of the strongest creations 
of the century. 

Stedman's mind is retentive and flexible. His vast 
stores of knowledge are always at instant command. 
His literary taste is fastidious, his sense of harmony 
delicate, his judgments as to poetic merit rarely at 
fault. He has what seems out of place in a critic, 
a kindly heart. Few indeed are the writers of the 
younger generation who have not received from him a 
helping word. With his powers now at their best and 
his pen "at topmost speed," it is not hazardous to 
prophesy stronger work from him in the future than 
he has as yet given us. 

4. Thomas Bailey Aldrich (b. 1836). 

Although a native of New Hampshire, born and reared 
in the old seaport town of Portsmouth and although 

2b 



370 AMERICAN LITERATURE. 

"Pampinea." since 1866 a resident of Boston, Aldrich is 
Cloth of Gold, always mentioned with Taylor and Stod- 
™ 74 ' ^.^77 dard and Stedman. During the fifteen 

Flower of Gold. & 

1881. years of his residence in New York, he 

Beautiful became so completely a member of this 

^ufof his Head. little g rou P of P oets and so thoroughly im- 
18G2, bued with its spirit that his name seems 

Story of a Bad 

Boy. 1870. out of place when classed elsewhere. 
is?? 07 "' Aldrich became a resident of New York 

Prudence Pal- j n ig53 # His plans for a college education 

frey. 1874. * & 

The Queen of and a literary career had "just been rudely 

Sheba. 1877. . , J 

z%e suihvater overturned by his father s sudden death, 
J a ff e y- •■ an( q ^ e ^ad come to the city to accept a 

.From PonJca- J * 

g° -P e «^- position in the counting-room of his uncle. 
An Old Town by Bat his tastes and inclinations were far 

the Sea. 1883. TT ■ . _ . 

irom mercantile. He employed his leisure 
hours in writing romantic lyrics, some of which crept 
into the newspapers ; he drifted into the little Bohe- 
mian circle of poets and literary enthusiasts who had 
gathered about Taylor and Stoddard, and he soon 
resigned his desk to devote himself, like the rest of 
the group, to poetry, supporting himself, meanwhile, by 
newspaper work. In 1855, while yet in his uncle's 
office, he published his first volume, The Dells, a small 
collection of youthful verse, which fell unnoticed from 
the press. The next year, however, he won immediate 
and widespread popularity with his " Ballad of Babie 
Bell," a touching poem of child death, and from this 
time his literary advance was swift and sure. He was 
for three years on the editorial staff of The New York 



THE LATER POETS. 371 

Home Journal, then under the management of Willis 
and Morris ; he was editor of Every Saturday in Boston 
from 1870 to 1874, and editor of The Atlantic Monthly 
from 1881 until 1890 (Stedman, 440, 441; Richardson, 
II., 265-269; Vedder's American Writers of To-day). 

As a Poet. — "In lyric poetry," says S. R. Driver, 
" the poet gives vent to his personal emotions or experi- 
ences, his joys or sorrows, his cares or complaints, his 
aspirations or his despair; or he reproduces in words 
the impressions which Nature or history have made 
upon him." Judged by this definition, Aldrich, more 
than any other American poet since Poe, is distinctively 
a lyrist. His characteristic poems are drawn from the 
depths of his heart and experience, but he is not con- 
tent to give them forth spontaneously and thought- 
lessly ; he must cut them with infinite care, and burnish 
them into dainty forms until they become brilliants. 
What many another poet would be content to leave in 
massive proportions, Aldrich polishes into a tiny gem, 
exquisite in its beauty. What vistas and abysses of 
thought one may catch in each facet of such a lyric as 
" Identity." 

" Somewhere, — in desolate, wind-swept space, 
In twilight land, in No-man's land, — 
Two hurrying shapes met face to face 
And bade each other stand. 

" ' And who are you ? ' cried one, agape, 
Shuddering in the gloaming light ; 
' I do not know,' said the other shape, 
' I only died last night.' " 



372 AMERICAN LITERATURE. 

Aldrich stands at the head of American writers oi 
Vers de Societe, poets who " amid all the froth of society 
feel that there are depths in our nature that even in the 
gaiety of drawing-rooms cannot be forgotten," who 
write "the poetry of bitter-sweet of sentiment that 
breaks into humor." Poems like "Comedy," "Destiny," 
" Palabras Carinosas," and " On an Intaglio Head ol 
Minerva," may be taken as representatives of his best 
work in this field. 

Like Taylor and Stoddard, Aldrich has always de- 
lighted in dreams of the East and the South. What a 
wealth of fancy are in "Dressing the Bride," and "Hovv 
the Sultan goes to Ispahan"; what passion and languor 
ous beauty in "Pepita," "The Sultana," and "Pam- 
pinea." But the poems that have won the popular 
heart are those perfect lyrics written for the most parjj 
in the poet's earlier years, when the wine of song flowed 
of itself from the vintage. Few indeed are those whcj 
love poetry and beauty who have not in their memories 
stanzas of lyrics like " Nameless Pain," " Before the 
Rain," "After the Rain," "Tiger Lilies," "Snow," 
"Castles," "Piscataqua River," "The Voice of the 
Sea," "The One White Rose," and "The Night Wind." 
Not often has the poet succeeded with long poems. 
His longer pieces, like " Windham Towers " and " Mer 
cedes," are of moderate interest. Among the best oi 
these, perhaps, are his monastic legends, " The JewV 
Gift," " The Legend of Ara Cceli," and that swee 
story, " Friar Jerome's Beautiful Book," that migb 
have been told by the Spanish Jew in The Tales of c 



THE LATER POETS. 373 

Wayside Inn. Of his other longer poems, " Spring in 
New England " may be mentioned as the best poetical 
effort inspired by the Northern Memorial Day. 

Aldrich loves colors, sweet odors, and mere sensual 
beauty as passionately as did Keats. He is a worker in 
words, — a painter using words as pigments. He has 
succeeded as few other Americans have with that 
most artificial of verse forms, the sonnet. He is a poet 
of nature, yet he sees nature always through a golden 
mist of romance. His descriptions are worked out with 
all the minuteness of detail of a pre-Raphaelite picture, 
— indeed many of his lyrics might have been written 
by Rossetti himself. With what a wealth of color and 
fulness of detail has he elaborated pictures like this : 

" And now the orchards, which were white 
And red with blossoms when she came, 
"Were rich in autumn's yellow prime : 
The clustered apples burnt like flame, 
The soft-cheek peaches blusht and fell, 
The ivory chestnut burst its shell, 
The grapes hung purpling in the grange." 

Or this: 

" We knew it would rain, for the poplars showed 
The white of their leaves, the amber grain 
Shrunk in the wind, — and the lightning now 
Is tangled in tremulous skeins of rain." 

Aldrich's field is a limited one, yet within his limits 
he is a perfect master. " He is the celebrator," says 
W. H. Bishop, " of everything bright and charming, of 
things opalescent, rainbow-hued, of pretty women, roses, 
jewels, humming-bird and oriole, of blue sky and sea, 



374 AMERICAN LITERATURE. 

and the daintiest romance of the daintiest spots of for- 
eign climes." ; 

Required Reading. — Oriental Pictures : " Dressing the Bride," 
" When the Sultan goes to Ispahan," " Pepita," " Pampinea," 
"The Sultana." Poems of Moods: "An Untimely Thought," 
" Destiny," " Rencontre," " Nameless Pain," " Before the Rain," 
" After the Rain," "Snow," "Castles," " Piscataqua River," "Tiger 
Lilies," " The Voice of the Sea," " May," " The One White Rose," 
" The Night Wind," " At Two and Twenty," and " Amontillado." 
Monastic Legend: "Friar Jerome's Beautiful Book." Sonnets: 
"Sleep," "Pursuit and Possession," "Fredericksburg," "Barber- 
ries." Other Lyrics : " Spring in New England," " On an Intaglio 
Head of Minerva," " Comedy." 

As a Prose Writer. — In 1870 Aldrich published The 
Story of a Bad Boy, a book which, drawn from memo- 
ries of his own early days in Portsmouth, has in it all 
of the romance of boyhood as seen through the mists 
of gathering years. Its wit and pathos, its thrilling 
situations, and its brilliant prose style made it at once 
a classic among American juveniles. During the next 
ten years Aldrich put forth his Marjorie Daw and Other 
Stories and his three novels, Prudence Palfrey, The 
Queen of Sheba, and The Stillwater Tragedy. " Marjorie 
Daw" may be taken as the best representative of its 
author's short stories. Sparkling with wit, and full of 
irresistible scenes and droll characterizations, it leads 
the reader on and on till of a sudden it drops him into 
a cleverly concealed pitfall and leaves him to his fate. 
The novels are tales of New England village life, idyllic 
in tone, and full of their author's charming personality. 
Their chief merit lies in their minute carefulness of 
diction, their sparkling wit, and their clever character!- 



THE LATER POETS. 375 

zation. From Ponkapog to Pesth, a series of sketches 
of European travel, graphic and witty, appeared in 1883, 
and An Old Town by the Sea, a loving study of his 
native Portsmouth, appeared ten years later. 

Aldrich resigned the editorship of The Atlantic in 
1890 to devote his time wholly to literary production, 
and, as he is as yet in the prime of his powers, much 
work of no uncertain quality may be confidently ex- 
pected from his pen. 

Later Poets. — Of the younger poets of the metropolis, 
Richard Watson Gilder (b. 1844) and Edgar Fawcett 
(b. 1847) deserve passing mention. There seems to be 
something in the atmosphere of New York conducive 
to conscientious poetic workmanship. Nearly all of her 
poets, following perhaps the difficult precedent set by 
Stoddard and Stedman and Aldrich, have been literary 
artists who have labored over their work as a lapidary 
toils over a gem. Gilder and Fawcett have been no 
sxceptions. Gilder's Five Books of Song (1893), which 
contains all of his poetic work, is a casket of brilliants 
whose beauty is due largely to their cutting. As the 
editor of The Century Magazine, Gilder has become 
me of the most influential of American literary men. 
Fawcett, who has written voluminously in almost every 
lepartment of literature, has published Fantasy and 
Passion, a volume of lyrics well described by its title, 
md Song and Story, a later collection. H. C. Bunner 
^b. 1855), the editor of Puck, has written many finished 
yrics of the Vers de Societe order, the best of which 
ire contained in Airs from Arcady. 



XXVI. 

THE LATER POETS. 
II. THE NEW YORK GROUP. 

5. Walt Whitman (1819-1892). 

" The poet of Democracy." 

"In absolute ability he is about equal to Taylor, Stoddard, Sted- 
man, or Aldrich ; but by minimizing the spiritual and the artistic, and 
magnifying the physical and the crudely spontaneous, he has attracted 
an attention among critics in America, England, and the Continental 
nations greater, for the moment, than that bestowed upon any con- 
temporary singer of his nation, and fairly rivalling the international 
adulation of his exact opposite, Poe." — Richardson. 

Life (by William Clark ; Walt Whitman as Poet and 

Person, by John Burroughs ; Autobiographia, the story 

of Whitman's life told by selections from 

Leaves of Grass. , . . 

1855. his prose writings). Walt Whitman was 

Drum-Taps. fe f , { yeoman stock at West 

Specimen Days r -> j 

mid Collect Hills, Long Island, thirty miles from Newj 
November York City. His early surroundings resem- 

Boughsterose). ^^ ^^ q£ WMttier and Taylor> «. The 

clothes," says Burroughs, "were mainly homespun. (i 
Journeys were made by both men and women on horse- 1 
back. Both sexes labored with their own hands, — the j 
men on the farm, the women in the house and around I 
it. Books were scarce. The annual copy of the alma- 

376 



THE LATER POETS. 377 

nac was a treat and was pored over through the long 
winter evenings." 

But before Whitman was five years old his parents 
removed to Brooklyn, where the lad soon became a 
complete metropolitan. He attended the public schools 
for a short time, became a lawyer's office boy, and at 
length a compositor on The Long Island Patriot. His 
after career was a varied one. "I have," he said in 
his seventy-third year, "passed an active life, as country 
school-teacher, gardener, printer, carpenter, author, and 
journalist, domiciled in nearly all of the United States 
and principal cities North and South, — went to the 
front (moving about and occupied as army nurse and 
missionary) during the Secession War, 1861 to 1865, 
and in the Virginia hospitals and after the battles of 
that time, tending the Northern and Southern wounded 
alike, — worked down South and in Washington city 
arduously three years, — contracted the paralysis which 
I have suffered ever since, and now live in a little cot- 
tage of my own, near the Delaware in New Jersey." 

Leaves of Grass. — Whitman commenced his literary 
career much as did his brother poets of the metropolis. 
He wrote short tales of a sentimental, moralizing nature, 
as was the fashion of the time ; and he tried his hand at 
poetry written in the ordinary metres. But the lyric 
was too delicate a reed upon which to voice his " bar- 
baric yawp," and he soon exchanged it for an unwieldy 
instrument of his own construction. The literary form 
of his choice is a fantastic sort of chant, unrhymed and 
unrhythmical, obeying no laws save those dictated by its 



378 AMERICAN LITERATURE. 

maker's caprice. Its user has unlimited license. Its 
lines may contain two words or two hundred, and there 
are no words in the language or "expressions or com- 
binations of words that may not be admitted at any 
point. It has been compared to the literary form used 
by the Hebrew prophets; to some of the forms used 
by Matthew Arnold and other English poets ; to literal 
translations of Homer and Vergil, but it really resembles 
none of these. It is intensely individual, bearing on 
every line the peculiar stamp of Walt Whitman. 

Leaves of Grass, in its first incomplete form, appeared 
in 1855. The public received it in uncomprehending 
silence, but Whitman, nothing daunted, still went on 
with his " easily-written, loose-fingered chords." At 
length Emerson, always on the lookout for marked 
individuality, recognized the new form of verse, and 
immediately the fortunes of the poet began to mend, 
but it was not until after the war that he became at 
all well known. A peculiar circumstance brought him 
into notice. He was dismissed from the Interior Depart- 
ment at Washington on account of the alleged immo- 
rality of his book, when all at once from both England 
and America there arose a host of defenders of " the 
good, gray poet" who at that time had reached the 
patriarchal age of forty-six. A spirited discussion 
began which soon went to absurd lengths on either 
side. The English poet, W. M. Rossetti, at the head 
of the so-called " Whitmaniacs," boldly asserted that 
Whitman was the great representative American Poet, 
while the other side as emphatically declared that he 



THE LATER POETS. 379 

was no poet at all. The truth undoubtedly lies between 
these extremes, but the controversy is not yet settled, nor 
will it be for a generation at least. 

His Philosophy and Style. — (Richardson, II., 268- 
280; Stedman, 349-395.) Leaves of G-rass is Whit- 
man's master work ; he spent his life in perfecting it and 
revising it. He declared that he had omitted nothing ; 
that he was all there ; that the book was to be his " carte 
de visite to future generations." Its aim, as its author 
expressed it, is " to present a complete picture of man in 
this age ; " and if a running catalogue, minutely specific, 
of every detail and accessory of modern life is what was 
meant, the book has accomplished its purpose. He has 
touched upon every subject; he has described everything, 
and he has omitted nothing in his descriptions. He has 
rilled page after page with enumerations like this : 

" Land of wheat, beef, pork ! Land of wool and hemp ! Land 

of the potato, the apple, and the grape ! 
Land of the pastoral plains, the grass fields of the world! 

Land of those sweet-aired interminable plateaus ! Land 

there of the herd, the garden, the healthy honse of adobe ! 

Land there of rapt thought and of the realization of the 

stars ! Land of simple, holy, untamed lives ! 
Lands where the northwest Columbia winds, and where the 

southwest Colorado winds. 
Land of the Chesapeake ! Land of the Delaware ! 
Land of Ontario, Erie, Huron, Michigan! 
Land of the Old Thirteen ! Massachusetts land ! Land of 

Vermont and Connecticut." 

Many of his longer poems contain no consecutive 
thought; they wander all over the cosmos and beyond. 
A long list of the fauna of North America is followed 



380 AMERICAN LITERATURE. 

by a description of the defence of the Alamo ; of the 
capture of the Serapis by John Paul Jones ; and then 
by a minute catalogue of New York street-sights. 
There is nothing that may not be mentioned however 
gross, no slang of the street which may not be intro- 
duced at any place. Here and there are lines that are 
genuinely poetic : 

" The carpenter dresses his plank — the tongue of his f oreplane 
whistles its wild ascending lisp." 
Or, 

" A child said ' What is the grass ? ' fetching it to me with full 
hands ; 
How could I answer the child ? I do not know what it is any 
more than he." 

Or again, 

" Press close, bare-bosomed Night ! Press close, magnetic, nour- 
ishing Night ! 
Night of south winds ! Night of the few large stars ! 
Still, nodding night! Mad, naked, summer night." 

But among these gems there are scattered such lines as 
these : 

" Three scythes at harvest whizzing in a row from three lusty 
angels with shirts bagging out at their waists." 

With most persons Whitman is an acquired taste. 
When one opens Leaves of Grass for the first time, 
he sees little that appears to him like poetry. More 
familiarity, however, may disclose lines full of a cer- 
tain grandeur, lines singularly happy in expression, as 
" where the herds of buffalo make a crawling spread of 
the square miles." But after they have singled out the 



THE LATER POETS. 381 

grand lines, have been startled here and there by the 
singularly realistic touches, and have been thrilled by a 
few of the sweeping pictures, most readers find their 
enthusiasm exhausted. The most devoted of Whit- 
man's admirers, like Stedman and Burroughs, caught 
their first enthusiasm from the lips of the poet himself, 
but to those who must depend alone upon the poet's 
printed words, enthusiasm comes less easily. It is cer- 
tainly true that to the majority of readers Leaves of 
Grass contains a few good things amid a disgusting 
mass of rubbish. 

Whitman is confessedly the poet of the body. His 
look is not upward. He grovels in the earthy and the 
disgusting parts of human life and experience. He 
worships himself, — his body. His egotism is remark- 
able. " While they discuss," he says, " I am silent, and 
go bathe and admire myself." " I dote on myself," he 
cries, " I, Walt Whitman." 

"I sat studying at the feet of the great masters. 
Now, if eligible, oh that the great masters might return and 
study me." 

All of the great poets of the world have looked away 
from their disgusting surroundings and fleshly fetters 
into a world of their creation that was bright and 
ethereal, but Whitman cries " I am satisfied " with the 
perishable and the carnal. This alone would debar him 
from the company of the great masters of song. 

His Democracy. — One chief reason why Europeans 
have chosen Whitman as the American laureate is on 



382 AMERICAN LITERATURE. 

account of his extreme democracy. To him all men 
are equal, and as a corollary to this he added that all 
functions and parts of man are of equal honor. To 
many his egotism is only an honest expression of this 
sense of his equality with all other men. He delighted 
in the sons of toil, in the great average class, even in 
the outcast and degraded. As Whittier was near the 
soil and understood the hearts and lives of the New 
England peasantry, so Whitman was near the heart of 
the great metropolis. He has written now and then 
of nature, but he understood better 

" The blab of the pave, the tires of carts, shift: of boot soles, talk 
of promenaders, 
The heavy omnibus, the driver with his interrogating thumb, 
the clank of the shod horses on the granite floor." 

He delighted in ferries, and at one time he knew every 
deck-hand and pilot on the Brooklyn boats. He was for 
years on terms of closest intimacy with scores of cab- 
men and teamsters. " They had immense qualities," he 
writes, "largely animal, — eating, drinking, — great per- 
sonal pride, in their way, — perhaps a few slouches here 
and there, but I should have trusted the general run of 
them, in their simple good will and honor, under all 
circumstances. Not only for comradeship, and some- 
times affection, — great studies I found them also." 
Such practical democracy was new to Europe. 

Whitman's personality is by no means to be gathered 
from Leaves of Grass. That he was a jovial, whole- 
hearted comrade to all men, one whose soul went out in 
full to his fellow whatever his station, may be gathered 



THE LATER POETS. 383 

from every page, but in his life there was nothing 
egotistic or immoral. Few of our poets have been more 
thoroughly lovable. Sir Edwin Arnold, who visited 
him at Camden during Whitman's last years, declares 
that he passed with him the most delightful day of his 
life. 

His Lyrics. — Whitman's truest poetry is outside of 
Leaves of Crrass. His Drum Taps contains some of the 
best lyrics inspired by the war. " When Lilacs Last in 
the Dooryard Bloomed," and " Captain, My Captain " 
(both on* the death of Lincoln), " The Man-of-War 
Bird," and " Come up from the Fields, Father," are 
among the treasures of American literature. It is a 
noteworthy fact that in these noble lyrics Whitman 
abandoned his chant, and wrote in the usual poetic 
forms. It is these poems that disarm criticism ; he who 
can write a lyric as intense and finished as " Captain, 
My Captain " is a poet, and a poet too of no ordinary 
rank. 

" O Captain ! my Captain ! our fearful trip is done ; 
The ship has weathered every rack, the prize we sought is won. 
The port is near, the bells I hear, the people all exulting, 
While follow eyes the steady keel, the vessel grim and daring. 
But O heart ! heart ! heart ! 

O the bleeding drops of red, 
Where on the deck my captain lies, 
Fallen cold and dead. 

O Captain ! my Captain ! rise up and hear the bells ; 

Rise up — for you the flag is flung, for you the bugle trills ; — 

For you bouquets and ribbon'd wreaths ; for you the shore's 

a-crowding ; — 
For you they call, the swaying mass, their eager faces turning. 



384 AMERICAN LITERATURE. 

Here Captain ! dear father ! 

This arm beneath your head ; 
It is some dream that on the deck 

You've fallen cold and dead. 

My Captain does not answer, his lips are pale and still ; 
My father does not feel my arm, he has no pulse nor will; 
The ship is anchored safe and sound, its voyage closed and done ; 
From fearful trip the victor ship comes in with object won. 
Exult, O shores, and ring, O bells, 

But I, with mournful tread, 
Walk the deck where my captain lies 
Fallen cold and dead." 

Required Reading. — "Walt Whitman" (paragraph 206, "I 
understand the large hearts of heroes," to the end of the frigate 
fight) ; " The Ox Tamer," " Mannahatta," " When Lilacs Last in 
the Dooryard Bloomed," " Dirge for Two Veterans," " The Man-of- 
War Bird," " Come up from the Fields, Father." 



XXVII. 

POETS OF THE SOUTH AND WEST. 

I. THE SOUTH. 

The history of American literature previous to the 
Civil War must of necessity confine itself closely to the 
writers and writings of New England and New York. 
The present period, however, has witnessed a gradual 
widening of the literary field. The South and the West 
have been heard from with increasing frequency until 
now no one region can claim a monopoly of the literary 
product. The literature of the South, even to the pres- 
ent day, has been small and sporadic. The patriarchal 
life of the great plantations and the peculiar social sys- 
tem of the southern cities have not been conducive to 
literary achievement (p. 13). They have developed men 
of acknowledged genius in almost every other field, — 
jurists, soldiers, orators, and statesmen ; but, aside from 
Poe, no author of commanding rank. There has been 
small demand for literature, the leisure class as a rule 
caring little for reading, and the masses being illiterate. 

But even these adverse circumstances have not been 
able to keep out of sight several true poets. Amid 
untold discouragements they have sung on ; mostly, 
however, to audiences in the North. " Their lives," says 
Hayne, " can never be read without bitter pain ; the 
direct results of poverty being but too conspicuous in 
2 c 385 - 



386 AMERICAN LITERATURE. 

the determination of their melancholy fates." The war 
broke into their lives with its harsh discord ; it wrung 
from their hearts fiery battle lyrics, and it left them in 
poverty and shattered health to sing sadly of the happy 
days that for them would never return. 

" Forgotten ! Tho' a thousand years should pass, 

Methinks our air will throb with memory's thrills, 
A common grief weigh down the faltering grass, 

A pathos shroud the hills ; 
Waves roll lamenting ; autumn sunsets yearn 
For the old time's return." — Hayne. 

Of these poets the only ones who merit particular 
attention are Hayne and Lanier. 

1. Paul Hamilton Hayne (1830-1886). 

"No Southern poet has written so much or done so much to give 
a literary impulse to his section, so that he well deserves the title that 
has been bestowed upon him by his English friends as well as by his 
own people, 'the Laureate of the South.' " — Margaret J. Preston. 

" His verse displays the wealth and warmth of the landscape of 
South Carolina and Georgia, the loneliness of the ' pine barrens ' where 
nature seems unmolested, or the swish of the wild Southern sea." — 
Richardson. 

Life (by Margaret J, Preston, prefixed to the 1882 
edition of his poems; see Literary World, XIV.,' 74). 
Poems. 1855. The city of Charleston, South Carolina, 

Sonnets and . 

other Poems. during the decade before the war con- 

1857 

Voiio, a Legend tained the most brilliant and enthusiastic 
Col he i859! d ° f g r0U P of literary workers that has ever 
Legends and gathered in the South. At its head stood 

Lyrics. 1872. ° 

The Mountain the prolific novelist, William Gilmore 
1873. Simms (p. 51), while about him were 



THE POETS OF THE SOUTH. 387 

gathered younger writers like Henry Timrod (1829- 
1867), Paul Hamilton Hayne, and many others whose 
names are less known to fame. In 1857, the year that 
witnessed the birth of the Atlantic Monthly, the little 
group dreaming of a distinctively Southern literature, 
established a literary magazine of the first rank, mod- 
elled after BlachivoooV s and published under the name 
of RusselVs Magazine. But the South was not ready 
for a distinctively literary organ, and the magazine 
died a lingering death even before the outbreak of the 
war. 

Hayne, the most active spirit of this literary movement, 
was a member of the old South Carolina family that has 
played such an important part in early American history. 
He had been reared in a wealthy and cultured home, 
had been educated at Charleston College, and after a 
course in the law, had been admitted to the bar of his 
state. But the law was not to his taste and he aban- 
doned it to devote himself wholly to literary work. His 
poems, published in Boston in 1855, and his second vol- 
ume published in Charleston two years later, brought 
him into wide notice as a poet, and a brilliant career 
seemed open to him ; but the war changed the current, 
of his life. It swept away his property and home, 
and the hopes and dreams of his young manhood. 
Literature which had been to him a pastime now be- 
came a means of support. He wrote editorials and book 
notices for various journals, and at one time was editor 
of a leading Southern paper. His last years were spent 
amid the Georgia pines, where in sickness and poverty 



388 AMERICAN LITERATURE. 

he wrote his sweetest lyrics, and where he died in 1886, 
mourned by North and South alike. 

As a Poet. — Hayne belongs distinctively to the artis- 
tic, imaginative school of lyrists. Had he removed to 
New York, he would without doubt have become one 
of that select circle whose leaders are now Stedman and 
Stoddard. His ability as a literary craftsman is shown 
by his marked success with the sonnet, that unfailing 
indicator of poetic skill ; his true lyric power appears 
in his songs of the war. He did for the South what 
Whittier did for the North. The lyrics " My Mother- 
land," "Stonewall Jackson," "The Little White Glove," 
and above all " Beyond the Potomac," indicate the high- 
water mark of the Southern poetry of the Rebellion. 
Hayne also had great success as a narrative poet, rank- 
ing in this department only second to Bayard Taylor. 
Besides poetry he wrote a biographical sketch of his 
uncle, Robert Y. Hayne (p. 186), and appreciative 
memoirs of Timrod and Simms. 

"Hayne is a knight of chivalry, a troubadour, a minne-singer 
misplaced and misunderstood, who should have lived ages ago in 
Provence or some other sunny land. What I admire in him most 
is his loyalty to his vocation and the conscientiousness with which 
he gives voice to his poetic impulses whether the world heeds them 
or not." — John R. Thompson. 

Required Reading. — His best sonnets, " At Last " and " Earth 
Odors after Rain " ; Poems of the war, " Beyond the Potomac," 
"Our Martyr," "My Motherland," "The Little White Glove," 
" Stonewall Jackson " ; also " MacDonald's Raid," " The Wife of 
Brittany," " Daphles," "Lyric of Action," "The Dryad of the 
Pine," " Forecastings," "The Vision at Twilight," "Above the 
Storm," " Underground," and "Love's Autumn." 



THE POETS OF THE SOUTH. 389 



2. Sidney Lanier (1842-1881). 

"A poet of rare promise, whose original genius was somewhat 
hampered by his hesitation between two arts of expression, music 
and verse, and by his effort to co-ordinate them." — Beers. 

Life (by Charles N. West; by W. H. Ward in the 
1884 edition of Lanier's Poems. See also Century 
Magazine, April, 1864, and Tiger Lilies). 

Of the little group of poets who sang the novS) Z 'i867. (a 
heart and hope of the Confederacy, the Poems, mi. 

a • i t • P ^ . The B °y s ' 
youngest was kidney Lanier, ot Georgia. Froissart. 1878. 

Born in 1842, he had scarcely completed ^kw^'ifiS. 9 
his college course when he entered the The Science of 

English Verse. 

Southern army to serve through the en- 1880. 

TT . . . -i . , t The Boys' Mab- 

tire war. He participated in the seven inogion. 1881. 
days' fighting before Richmond; served p l e l^ oy i^ 2 . 
with the signal corps in various parts of The English 

& r . T Novel. 1883. 

the South; was captured while in com- 
mand of a blockade runner, and served for several 
months as a prisoner of war, — all of which adventures 
he recorded in Tiger Lilies, a novel written two years 
after the close of the Rebellion. After a varied career 
as clerk, academy principal, and lawyer, he became, in 
1879, lecturer on English literature in Johns Hopkins 
University, a position which he held until his death in 
1881. 

As a Poet. — To understand Lanier's work one must 
appreciate his intense passion for music. In a letter to 
Hayne he once wrote : 

" Whatever turn I may have for art is purely musical, poetry 



390 - AMERICAN LITERATURE. . 

being with me a mere tangent into which I shoot sometimes. I 
could play passably on several instruments before I could write 
legibly, and since then the very deepest of my life has been filled 
with music which I have studied and cultivated far more than 
poetry." 

Poetry was to him one of the many varieties of music. 
In its highest manifestations it could be comprehended 
only by a few. "In all cases," he declared, "the appeal 
is to the ear, but the ear should for that purpose be 
educated up to the highest possible plane of culture." 
Like Whitman, he protested against the stereotyped 
verse forms and the traditions of poetic technique. 
" For the artist in verse," he maintained, " there is no 
law : the perception and love of beauty constitute the 
whole outfit." With these notions as to the nature 
and elements of verse, he set out in all seriousness to 
compose symphonies in words. By the skilful manip- 
ulation of metres and accents, of onomatopoeia and allit- 
eration, he sought to make a musical picture, if such a 
thing can be imagined. The poems " Sunrise," " The 
Marshes of Glynn," and " Corn " may be taken as the 
best examples of his methods. 

Not all of Lanier's poems are so elaborately wrought. 
Some are as spontaneous and limpid as bird-songs. Shel- 
ley himself never wrote a sweeter stanza than 

" Sail on, sail on, fair cousin cloud ! 
Oh, loiter hither from the sea ! 

Still-eyed and shadow-browed, 

Steal off from yon far-drifting crowd, 
And come and brood upon the marsh with me." 

Lanier defended his poetical theories in his Science of 



THE POETS OF THE WEST 391 

English Verse, a work full of subtle analysis but of little 

practical value. 

Required Reading. — "Hymns of the Marshes," "The Song 
of the Chattahoochee," "The Mocking-bird," "The Revenge of 
Hamish," "The Ship of Earth," "Tampa Robins," and "The 
Bee." 

The Dialect Poets. — The leading singers of the 
South, like Poe and Hayne and Lanier, were poets of 
culture who represented the higher classes ; it remained 
for Stephen Collins Foster (1826-1864), and his 
followers, like Irwin Russell (1853-1879), to enter 
the cabins of the lowly and learn their sorrows and 
their joys. Few American poems smack more strongly 
of the soil or are more unquestionably original than 
Foster's plaintive folk-songs like " The Old Folks at 
Home," and " My Old Kentucky Home." 

II. THE WEST. 

The Ohio Valley.— The first half of the Nineteenth 
Century was in reality the colonial period for the vast 
extent of territory lying west of the Alleghanies. It 
was a time of establishing landmarks, of subduing 
physical obstacles, of experimenting and preparation. 
It was not until the second half of the century had 
opened, that the first songs having a distinctively West- 
ern quality began to appear' in the periodicals of the 
East. The first movement towards a distinctively 
Western literature, and indeed the only movement thus 
far which has been anything but sporadic, came from 
the Ohio Valley, which, being one of the earliest settled 



392 AMERICAN LITERATURE. 

portions of the West, had acquired a marked individu- 
ality. From the Ohio Valley have come the poets 
Alice and Phoebe Cary, Piatt, Hay, and Riley, and the 
novelists Eggleston and Howells, all of whom have 
done much to cast a literary atmosphere over the land 
of their birth. (See Venable's Beginnings of Literary 
Culture in the Ohio Valley.) 

1. John James Piatt (b. 1835). 

" His poems are totally unlike the products of the Alantic coast ; 
they have a racy flavor of their own, and are a positive addition to our 
national literature."— Underwood. 

The little volume of youthful verse which was pub- 
lished in 1860, under the title Poems of Two Friends, 

marks the appearance of the first poetry 
Poems of Two L x L J 

Friends. 1860. having a distinctively Western flavor. Its 

Washington. authors, two printing-office employees, soon! 

1864# left the West, Piatt for Washington, where 

shine and Fire- a long and honorable official career awaited 

Western Win- n ^ m ' an( ^ Howells for Venice, where he was 

dows. 1869. to- pass four years as American Consul.! 

Landmarks and -^ , n- ,, » , 1 . . . ~ , -, 

Other Poems. -But Piatt never forgot his native fields. 

1871 

idyis and Lyrics From memories of his childhood he drew 
of the Ohio Vai- l ov ing studies of the heart life of his home 
At the Holy State until he became the Whittier of the 

Well. 1887. . t ,, TTr 

middle West. 

" John Piatt, the laureate of prairie and homestead life, has won 
a just reputation for his reflective and idyllic verse. He has a 
Wordsworthian sympathy with nature, and knowledge of its 
forms, and a sincere purpose. He transmits with much simplicity 
the air and bloom of the prairie, the firelight in the settler's home, 



THE POETS OF THE WEST. 393 

and the human endeavor of the great inland States he knows so 
well." — Stedman. 

2. John Hay (b. 1838). 

John Hay, a native of Indiana, and private secretary 
to Abraham Lincoln from 1861 until the President's 
death, published in 1871 a volume of pike County 
humorous Western ballads that for a time Ballads - 1871 - 

, Castilian Days. 

surpassed in popularity even Bret Harte s 1871. 
work in the same field. His " Jim Bludso," Lincoln 71 
"Little Breeches," and "Mystery of Gil- (with Nicola y)- 
gal" gave promise of a poetic career of no ordinary 
brilliancy, but Hay was content to abandon the field 
with his first success. 

His Castilian Days, a series of graceful studies of the 
social life, the romance, and the beauty of Spain, to 
which country he was Consul during the administration 
of Johnson, appeared the same year with Pike County 
Ballads. But the crowning work of his life is the pon- 
derous life of Abraham Lincoln, written in conjunction 
with Nicolay, which ran for two years in the The Cen- 
tury Magazine. The work is in reality a minute record 
of one of the most important periods in American his- 
tory. Of its ultimate rank it is as yet too early to 
prophesy, but it is not hazardous to declare it one of 
the very greatest of American biographies. As a store- 
house of facts for the future historian it is of priceless 
value. : p. 

Suggested Reading. — "The Cradle and the Grave of Cer- 
vantes," from Castilian Days. 



394 AMERICAN LITERATURE. 

Other Western Poets. — Of the younger school of 
Western poets only three merit especial attention. 
Will Carleton (b. 1845), a native of Michigan, but 
of late years a resident of Brooklyn, has achieved a 
wide popularity with his humorous and pathetic ballads 
of the home and the farm. Eugene Field (1850- 
1895), the sprightly humorist and poet, did his most 
enduring work as a delineator of child life. His " Lit- 
tle Boy Blue," full of exquisite tenderness and true 
pathos, is his best poem. Although a native of St. 
Louis, Field was reared and educated in Massachusetts. 
From 1883 until the time of his death he was connected 
with The Chicago News, conducting with rare ability 
the column entitled " Flats and Sharps " which, with 
mingled satire and wit, waged a tierce warfare against 
shams of every kind. Among his books may be men- 
tioned A Little Book of Western Verse and Echoes from 
the Sabine Farm, a sparkling translation of the Odes 
of Horace. The youngest of the Ohio Valley school, 
and in many respects its most promising member, is 
James Whitcomb Riley (b. 1854), "the Hoosier 
Poet," whose quaint and homely idyls of country life 
are full of true humor and genuine poetry. Among 
his volumes may be mentioned The Old Swimmin' 
Hole (1883), and Armazinda (1894). 

The California Poets. — The discovery of gold in 
California in 1849, with its attendant excitement and 
its unprecedented conditions, marks the opening of a 
picturesque era in American history. The mad rush 
of all nationalities across the pathless plains, around 



THE POETS OF THE WEST. 395 

the southern cape, across the isthmus ; the headlong 
scramble of the mines ; the mining towns that rose as 
if by magic in every gulch; the lawless miners who 
appealed to no law save their revolvers, — men who 
to-day might be fabulously rich, treating the town to 
champagne in buckets, to-morrow " busted," and at 
work with spade and cradle ; the rivalry and excite- 
ment when a stroke of the pick might make a man a 
millionaire or the turn of a card reduce him to poverty ; 
the new scenery, almost tropical in its flora, and unprec- 
edented in its proportions, with mammoth plants and 
trees, great canons, alkaline plains, and lofty sierras, — 
all this was highly romantic and bound sooner or later 
to have its laureate. 

1. Francis Bret Harte (b. 1839).' 

" There remain the democratic poets, among them Bret Harte, 
Cincinnatus (Joaquin) Miller, and Walt Whitman. All three are 
poets of the peculiar life of the New World, and not of the features 
it possesses in common with the Old. Bret Harte is the poet of the 
red-shirted diggers, Miller of the filibuster chiefs like Walker in Nica- 
ragua, Whitman of the workmen on wharves and farms, in dockyards, 
factories, and foundries, — of the free strong life of Young America." 
— Stedman. 

The first literary echo from the California mines was 
in Bayard Taylor's Eldorado, and Rhymes of Travel, 
written in the first feverish days of the Condensed 
gold excitement, before the region had ^Tanam'st 
gained the peculiar individuality that was ^ oems ' 18T1 * 
to characterize it in later times. The next gonauts. 1875. 

, , , . , Gabriel Convoy. 

echo came years later, when a young and 1876. 



396 AMERICAN LITERATURE. 

Echoes of the unknown writer startled the world with 

Foothills. 1879. . . . . . . ,., . ., ~ tj? 

The Tioins of nis g ra phic pictures ot lite in the Caliior- 

TaMe Mountain. n ^ a g U i c hes with its unprecedented social 

In the Carqui- and moral conditions. 

1883. Francis Bret Harte, a native of the 

Snow-Boundat state of New York, had gone to California 

Eagles. 1886. ' & 

And many in 1854, in the most picturesque days of the 

gold excitement. After a varied career as 
school-teacher, miner, compositor, and editor, he founded 
in San Francisco, in 1868, The Overland Monthly, a 
purely literary magazine whose spirit was well typified 
by the vignette upon its title page, — a grizzly bear 
crossing a railroad track. He had commenced his lit- 
erary career by contributing to the San Francisco jour- 
nals several poems of more than ordinary merit, among 
them " John Burns of Gettysburg," and " The Pliocene 
Skull," and he had published in 1867 his Condensed 
Novels, an amusing series of parodies so cleverly exe- 
cuted as to be actually valuable as literary criticism. It 
was not, however, until the appearance of " The Luck 
of Roaring Camp," in the second number of the Monthly, 
and " The Outcasts of Poker Flat," in the third number, 
that he gained more than a local audience ; but after 
the publication of these sketches and others that fol- 
lowed in rapid succession, Harte found himself all at 
once the most popular of American authors. The Brit- 
ish press, which has always insisted that our literature 
should deal with characters and scenes and principles 
peculiar exclusively to the New World, at once hailed 
him as the long-looked-for American laureate. His 



THE POETS OF THE WEST. 397 

countrymen also were unstinted in their praise. When, 
in 1871, he came to the East, his journey was almost a 
triumphal procession. The Atlantic Monthly offered him 
ten thousand dollars a year to write exclusively for its 
pages. In 1878" he was appointed Consul to Crefeld, 
Germany, but was transferred soon after to Glasgow, 
where he remained during two administrations. He 
still resides abroad, where he continues to pour out 
tales of California life, publishing sometimes as many 
as three volumes in a year. 

As a Poet. — During the earlier period of his literary 
career, when his message to the world was as yet untold 
and burning within him, Harte as often expressed himself 
in poetry as in prose, and indeed his first prose sketches 
in their intensity, their conception, and workmanship are 
very near to poetry. His poems were innovations as truly 
original in conception and execution as they were in sub- 
ject and theme. They are mostly monologues written 
in the dialect of the mines, full of slang and exclamation. 
There is little variety. A few stock characters and a few 
incidents are used over and over again. The wit is some- 
times forced and the humor overdrawn. But neverthe- 
less there is in them the indefinable charm of genius. 
Here and there are lyrics that, judged by any standard, 
are faultless gems. The beautiful story of " Conception 
de Arguello " is one of the glories of American literature. 
What a wealth of poetic description in the lines : 

" Week by week the near hills whitened in their dusty leather 
coats, — 
Week by week the far hills darkened from the fringing plain 
of oaks ; 



398 AMERICAN LITERATURE. 

Till the rains came and far-breaking, on the fierce southwester 

tost, 
Dashed the whole long coast with color, and then vanished and 

were lost. 
So each year the seasons shifted : wet and warm and drear and 

dry; 
Half a year of clouds and flowers, — half a year of dust and 

sky." 

The best known of all Harte's lyrics is his "Plain 
Language from Truthful James," better known as 
" The Heathen Chinee," which was hastily written, like 
Lowell's u The Courtin'," to fill an unfinished column. 

Keqtjired Reading. 1 - "Conception de Arguello," "Jim," "To 
a Pliocene Skull," "In the Tunnel," "John Burns of Gettysburg," 
" The Heathen Chinee." 

As a Prose Writer. — (Richardson, II. See also 
Haweis' American Humorists.') Although from the 
"The Luck of ^ me °^ ^is ^ rs ^ sketches in the Overland 
Bearing Camp." Monthly until the present, Harte has con- 

" The Outcasts ° . 

of Poker Fiat." tmued to write volume after volume 01 
."Miggies. , California tales, the first sketches from 

" Tennessee s 

Partner." \^ p en m ark the highest reach of his 

" Brown of 

Calaveras." literary achievement. JN ot only were these 
ciauTcameto ^ rs ^ creations full of novel scenes and 
Simpson's Bar." unprece( iented characters, but they were 
works of literary art worthy to be compared with the 
rarest products of American genius. Their pathos and 
humor are genuine ; their action intensely dramatic ; 
their imaginative power of epic strength. It is hard 
indeed to find flaws in these accurately cut cameos. 
Had Harte died in the full flush of his early achieve- 



THE POETS OF THE WEST. 399 

ment, the world would never have done discussing what 
might have been the ripe fruit when the early windfalls 
were of such rare quality. But Harte's ripe fruit was 
of inferior flavor. All that he has written in his later 
years is simply a recombination again and again of the 
scenes and characters and incidents of his earlier work, 
with less art and less enthusiasm and energy. 

His canvas is a limited one ; his characters are few, 
and, as in his poetry, his stock incidents and scenes are 
used over and over again. His tales all point to the 
same moral, — that in the dregs of men, in gamblers, 
murderers, drunkards, desperadoes, and outcasts, there 
are the latent germs of heroes ; that the evil in man can 
never completely drive the good from the heart. 

He is pre-eminently a writer of sketches. He excels in 
painting with a few deft strokes a scene or a character, 
but he has no sustained power of imagination. He has 
been called " a short-winded Dickens," and indeed up 
to a certain point the criticism is a just one. His char- 
acters are grotesque ; his style sometimes savors of 
Dickens ; he deals with low life ; and he uses pathos 
and humor with rare skill. That he is " short-winded " 
is seen in the way that he fails miserably with anything 
longer than a mere sketch. His longer novels, like 
Gabriel Convoy and The Story of a Mine, are simply 
collections of episodes. But the comparison with 
Dickens fails when we consider his inability to draw 
character. 

"When we have given full credit to the pathos and humor, to 
the poetic quality of fancy and imagination, then we must stop. 



400 AMERICAN LITERATURE. 

We have about reached the limit of the author's powers. The 
material for a fully developed character of any single individual 
is wanting. The action of men as arising from a bundle of mo- 
tives is not developed at all ; we see phases of life, but no complete 
life. We get a burning moment in a reckless career, an instanta- 
neous photograph, and that is all." — J". H. Morse. 

Required Reading. — " The Outcasts of Poker Flat ; " " How 
Santa Claus came to Simpson's Bar." 

2. Joaquin Miller (b. 1841). 

"The Oregon Byron." 

" His poetry is tropical in its profusion of color, and Eastern in 
the glowing heat of its impetuous passion." — Stedman. 

The story of Cincinnatus Hiner Miller reads like one 
of Harte's tales. He had gone with his father from 
Sonqs of the Indiana to Oregon in his thirteenth year, 
Sierras. 1870. j^ wor k e d f or a time on a farm, and at 

Songs of the 

Suniands. 1873. the age of sixteen had entered the Cali- 
Desin e fornia mines. Later he went with Walker 
Songs of Italy. £ Nicaragua, joined a tribe of Indians, 

Songs of the . . 

Mexican Seas, becoming at length their sachem, returned 

thf Sierra? % to Oregon, and began the study of law. 

2£?j? e ™- 77. • But his legal studies soon tiring him, he 

Nicaragua. f or one vear filled the hazardous position 

Shadows of . . 

Shasta (prose), of express messenger tor the gold-mining 
And others. districts of Idaho, after which he edited 
for a time a weekly newspaper soon suppressed for 
disloyalty, and in 1866 he was elected county judge in 
Eastern Oregon. In 1870 he published his first volume, 
Songs of the Sierras, which attracted immediate atten- 
tion. Lured by the warm welcome given the book by 



THE POETS OF THE WEST. 401 

the British press, Miller the same year sailed for Europe, 
where he was received with marked honors by the high- 
est literary society. On his return to America he lived 
for a time in Washington, but in 1887 he returned to 
the West, where he has since resided. 

As a Poet. — Miller's poetry is in many respects what 
might be expected from one who has had little education 
save that gained from contact with rough men and wild 
scenes. He early declared that he cared not a fig for 
" rith-um and measurement " ; he uses adjectives to 
redundancy ; and he echoes on every page his favorite 
poets, Byron and Swinburne. He attracted attention 
chiefly on account of the strangeness of his backgrounds 
and the tropical richness of his imagination. For a time 
it was believed that he was a Byron in the rough, and 
that more maturity and culture and a broader horizon 
would make of him a poet of high rank. But Miller 
has never risen above his earliest work. His poems 
have at times a wild, lawless beauty, and their pictures 
of the deserts, the sierras, and the American tropics, are 
often thrilling and poetic, but these grains of gold are 
scattered among a dreary mass of rubbish. Miller 
stands as a picturesque figure in American literature, 
and his name will always be mentioned in connection 
with that of Bret Harte, but the early decline of his 
fame seems to indicate that he is not a poet of high 
rank. 

Required Reading. — " Arizonian ; " " Californian." 
2d 



XXVIII. 
WOMAN IN LITERATURE. 

During the period since the Civil War no literary 
movement has been more marked or significant than the 
great advancement made by woman. It is now seen 
clearly that woman has found her complete emancipa- 
tion first in the world of letters. Her literary wares 
now compete for the same market as those of men, and 
command equal respect and equal compensation. 

The province occupied by woman is not a broad one. 
Almost without exception she has confined herself to two 
forms of literary expression: the lyric poem and the 
short sketch or novel of domestic life. As a poet she 
has dealt largely with subjective subjects. Her poems 
are mostly the songs of moods ; of joys and sorrows ; of 
aspirations and fears ; of impressions made by objects of 
beauty. Since nearly all the women poets have sung in 
the same key, voicing the same typical moods and expe- 
riences, the result has been to some degree monotonous. 
While many have sung well, few have stood out pre- 
eminent. Many a strong voice that in the early days 
would have commanded wide attention is now lost in 
the swelling harmony of the great chorus. 

402 



WOMAN IN LITERATURE. 403 

I. POETRY. 

1. Alice Cary (1820-1871). 

Perhaps the earliest singer of the Ohio Valley, though 
she bore no distinctively Western message, was Alice 
Cary of Cincinnati, whose first volume of „ „ .„ 

J Poems of Alice 

poems appeared in 1850. The story of arid Phoebe 

her girlhood has in it much to remind one ciovemoofc. 

of the early struggles of Whittier. The ^iywood (a 

daughter of a humble home, she had been nove1 )- 1855 - 

° Married, not 

deprived of education and culture, but Mated. 1856. 
with her sister Phoebe, whose life became Country Life. 
almost a part of her own, she had toiled L% r '. cs and 
blindly on. She found at length a warm Hymns. 1866. 
friend in Whittier, by whose advice she 1869. 
printed her first volume, and thus cham- n ot ers ' 
pioned, she soon gained such general praise that in 1851 
she removed to New York City, where she was hailed as 
"the Jean Ingelow of America." Here she passed the 
rest of her life. During her last years her modest home 
in Twentieth Street became the frequent meeting-place 
of the purest and best circles of literary New York. 

Alice Cary's poems are colorless and passionless. 
They have little spontaneity or large creative power. 
Everywhere in them one finds the hackneyed epithets 
and phrases, the sing-song rhythm, and the sentimental 
pictures of the period in which they were written. 
Their charm consists in their sweet femininity and their 
rare delicacy and simplicity. With a certain large 
class of readers these poems have a perennial charm. 



404 AMERICAN- LITERATURE. 

Perhaps her best claim to remembrance is her Clover- 
nook, a series of prose studies of her early Ohio home. 
" They bear," said Whittier, " the true stamp of genius, 
— simple, natural, truthful, — and evince a keen sense 
of the humor and pathos, of the comedy and tragedy, of 
life in the country." 

Among her poems may be mentioned " Pictures of 
Memory," praised by Poe, " The Gray Swan," " The Pict- 
ure Book," and " Our Schoolmaster." Phoebe Cary's 
" One Sweetly Solemn Thought " has become one of 
the most popular of American hymns. (See Whittier's 
" The Singer " ; also Memorial of Alice and Phoebe Gary, 
Mary Clemmer Ames.) 

2. Lucy Larcom (1826-1893). 

Like the Cary sisters and many other women who 
won literary recognition during the middle years of 
Ships in the the century, Lucy Larcom came from 

Mist 1859. 

Wild Roses of humble life. For several years she was 
cTidh U od a m ^ S^ * n Lowell, Massachusetts, and 

s °ngs. h er nrs t knowledge of poetrv was gained 

A New England ■ & _. . /-,. , & x " 

Girlhood. from books and clippings studied at odd 

ful Gate eaUU ~ moments amid the clashing of the looms. 
As it is in At length she became a school-teacher, 

Heaven. ° 

And others. and finally editor for a time of Our Young 
Folks. Like the Cary sisters, she early received encour- 
agement from Whittier. Her little poem, " Hannah 
Binding Shoes," first brought her into notice, and her 
ringing patriotic songs during the Civil War gave her a 
wide audience. Her poems, like those of Alice Cary, 



WOMAN IN LITERATURE. 405 

are still remembered not for their commanding power, 
but for their womanly sweetness and purity. She was 
at her best in pictures of the mountains and the sea, 
and in her later religious poems. (See Lucy Larcom's 
Life, Letters, and Diary, D. L. Addison.) 

Suggested Reading. — " Hannah Binding Shoes " ; A New 
England Girlhood, Outlined from Memory. See also her Sonnets : 
" Clouds on Whitef ace," " Chocorua," and " Black Mountain in 
Bearcamp Lake." 

3. Helen Hunt Jackson (1831-1885). 

Her "name outranked, at the time of her death, that of any other 
American woman who ever claimed the name of poet. Mrs. Jackson 
had the characteristics t)f the Dial group at its best : deep and sincere 
thought, uttered for its own sake in verse not untinged by the poetic 
inspiration and touch." — Bichardson. 

The life of Helen Hunt Jackson was full of deep 
contrasts. The daughter of a New England college 
professor, Nathan W. Fiske of Amherst, Verses by H.H. 
she passed a happy childhood, and was bus of Travel. 
given every opportunity for acquiring an 1872, 

JDZtS Oj JL CLlfC 

education. At the age of twentv-one she about Home 

*L J Matters. 1876. 

married Captain E. B. Hunt, a brilliant Bits of Travel 

- •!', i x i at Home. 1878. 

military engineer, and for eleven years ACenturyof 
she lived with him in almost perfect hap- D ^h o nor. 1881. 

-r. innr , i i i Ramona. 1884. 

pmess. But in 18oo her husband was zeph. 1885. 
killed while experimenting with a subma- ^etween-WMies. 
rine battery, and her two children, her And others, 
mother, and her father died shortly afterwards. 

After the first awful bitterness of her grief she turned 
to poetry for consolation. Her first work was an out- 
pouring of her personal suffering. 



406 AMERICAN LITERATURE. 

" Low, still, unutterably weak, 

In human helplessness more helpless than 

The smallest of God's other creatures can 
Be left, I lie and do not speak. 

Walls rise and close 

Around. No warning shows 
To me, who am but blind, which wall 
Will shelter and which one will fall 

And crush me in the dust, 

Not that I sinned, but that it must. 
Each hour within my heart some sweet hope dies." 

The burden of her cry was "I am blind." But resig- 
nation came at length and her songs, though always 
subjective and intense, became less like cries of grief. 
Her first volume of poems, Verses by H. H., appeared 
in 1870. She had already found an enthusiastic friend 
in Emerson. " The poems of a lady," he had declared, 
"who contents herself with the initials 4 H. H.' have 
rare merit of thought and expression." Thus heralded 
by Emerson, the volume won immediate success. Lyr- 
ics like " Spinning " and " My Legacy " became widely 
popular, while the deeper tones of " Thought," " Joy," 
"Resurgam," "Burnt Ships," " Gondolieds," and "My 
Strawberry" satisfied even the most critical. 

As a poet Mrs. Jackson's range was not a wide one, 
but within her limits she sang surpassingly well. She 
was not a creator; she simply read her own heart. 
The awfulness of her affliction cut her on for a time 
from the world, and like a great storm it cleared the J 
atmosphere about her so that she looked far into th 
mysteries that encompass mortal life. It was her I 
raptness, her mysticism, that appealed so strongly to j 



WOMAN IN LITERATURE. 407 

Emerson. An intensity of feeling and expression char- 
acterizes all of her lyrics. Some of her conceits are 
almost startling in their vividness and originality, as, 
for instance, the lines in "Resurgam" commencing, 

" Somewhere on earth, 
Marked, sealed, mine from its hour of birth, 
There lies a shining stone, 
My own." 

Mrs. Jackson ranks with the four or five Americans 
who have succeeded with the sonnet. Nearly half of 
her poems are written in this difficult measure. The 
best are, perhaps, "Mazzini," "Thought," and "The 
Zone of Calms." 

Required Reading. — " Resurgam," " Spinning," " My Legacy," 
■ Joy," " Gondolieds," " My Bees," " Mazzini," and " Thought." 

Her Prose. — After the first outburst of song Mrs. 
Jackson's Muse gradually became silent. Her first 
prose work, Bits of Travel, a collection of her letters 
from foreign lands, appeared in 1872. Shortly after- 
wards, to recruit her shattered health, she went to 
Colorado, where in 1875 she was married to Mr. W. S. 
Jackson of Colorado Springs. In her next book she 
poured out in prose her delight in the grand scenery 
and the intoxicating air of her new home. She became 
interested in the Indians, and in 1881 published A Cen- 
tury of Dishonor, an exhaustive study of the history of 
several of the tribes, full of her burning indignation 
at the uniform treachery and cruelty of the United 
States government. Two years later she was made 



408 AMERICAN LITERATURE. 

special commissioner to examine the condition of the 

Mission Indians of California. The literary fruit of 

this mission appeared one year later in Ramona, a work 

pronounced by A. W. Tourge'e as " unquestionably the 

best novel yet produced by an American woman." 

Mrs. Jackson intended that it should be the Uncle 

Tom's Cabin of the Indian. She put into it all of her 

intense earnestness and all of the best fruitage of her 

literary experience. She succeeded in producing a 

matchless work of art, but she was unable to impart to 

her readers that sense of reality and that potent thrill 

which made of Uncle Tom's Cabin a living influence. 

It is "the story of two decaying civilizations seen in the light 
of a fresher and stronger social, political, and religious development 
which tramples them ruthlessly, because unconsciously, into the 
dust of a new but half-appreciated realm. Hitherto fiction had 
treated California only as the seat of a new civilization. It had 
been delineated as the gold-digger's paradise, the adventurer's 
Eden, the speculator's El Dorado. Ramona pictures it as the 
Indian's lost inheritance and the Spaniard's desolated home." 
— A. W. Tour gee. 

Kequired Reading. — Ramona. 

4. Celia Thaxter (1835-1894). 

" While White's Selborne, and the pictures of Berwick, and Tho- 
reau's Walden, and the Autobiography of Richard Jefferies endure, so 
long will Among the Isles of Shoals hold its place with all lovers of 
nature." — Mrs. Fields. 

Celia Thaxter, much of whose life was passed at 
Poems 1871 Appledore on the Isles of Shoals, caught 
Among the isles more completely than has any other Ameri- 

of Shoals , J j 

(prose). 1873. can poet, not even excepting Longfellow, 



WOMAN IN LITERATURE. 409 

the echoes and odors of the Northern Dri/tweed. 

ocean. The sea had been her companion p oems f or 

from childhood. Her father, disappointed Children. 

in some political ambition, resolved to The Cruise of 

L the Mystery. 

withdraw forever from the mainland, and 1886. 
took his family to one of the rocky isles off the 
New Hampshire coast, where, as keeper of a light, he 
passed the rest of his life. In Among the Isles of Shoals, 
one of the most charming studies of the ocean and its 
phenomena in the language, Mrs. Thaxter has described 
the "unfolding of her own nature under influences of 
sky, and sea, and solitude, and untrammelled freedom." 
She became an eager student of nature — of the drift- 
weed, of the wild flowers of the rocks, of the birds of 
every variety that dashed themselves to death against 
the light. When Philip Thaxter, a man of education 
and culture, who had gone as a missionary to the fisher- 
men of Star Island, came to her in her early woman- 
hood, he brought a new world, new ambitions and 
dreams. After their marriage, she went with him to 
the mainland, to return only at intervals to her loved 
islands ; but though she enjoyed her new life to the 
utmost, the murmur of the ocean was ever in her ears. 
Her first poem, " Landlocked," full of longings for "the 
level line of solemn sea," was accepted by Lowell and 
printed in the seventh volume of the Atlantic, and from 
this time until her death few volumes of the magazine 
were without contributions from her pen. The last 
stanzas of "Landlocked" breathe the spirit of all her 
later poems of the sea. 



410 AMERICAN LITERATURE. 

"I dream 
Deliriously how twilight falls to-night 
Over the glimmering water, how the light 
Dies blissfully away, until I seem 

" To feel the wind, sea-scented, on my cheek, 
To catch the sound of dusky, flapping sail, 
And dip of oars, and voices on the gale 
Afar off, calling low, — my name they speak! 

" O Earth ! thy summer song of joy may soar 
Ringing to heaven in triumph. I but crave 
The sad caressing murmur of the wave 
That breaks in tender music on the shore." 

" All of the pictures over which I dream," she de- 
clared, "are set in this framework of the sea." One 
finds in her work the ocean in its every mood, — the 
long winter gales " when one goes to sleep in the 
muffled roar of the storm and wakes to find it still 
raging in senseless fury " ; " the flitting of. the coasters 
to and fro, the visits of the sea fowl, sunrise and sun- 
set, the changing moon, the northern lights, the con- 
stellations that wheel in splendor through the winter 
night"; "the vast weltering desolation of the sea." 
(See Letters of Celia Thaxter.) 

Required Reading. — Among the Isles of Shoals; " The Sand- 
piper," " The Watch of Boon Island," " The Spaniards' Graves," 
" The Wreck of the Pocahontas," " The Summer's Day," and 
" Before Sunrise." 

Other Poets. — It is hard indeed to choose from the 
great throng of sweet singers that have made musical 
the years since the war, the few who deserve extended 
praise or passing mention. Of necessity the list must be 
limited to a few typical names. Margaret Preston 



WOMAN IN LITERATURE. 411 

(b. 1825), the leading poetess of the South, has writ- 
ten many vigorous poems and sketches. Her Beechen 
Brook (1886) contains her two strongest lyrics : 
" Stonewall Jackson's Grave " and " Slain in Battle." 
Sarah Morgan Piatt (b. 1836) wife of John James 
Piatt, is by far the most eminent female poet of the 
West. Her lyrics are thoughtful and intense. Sted- 
man credits her with " traits resembling those of Miss 
Rossetti, — a vivid consciousness of the mystery of life 
and death." Among her volumes are A Woman's 
Poems (1871), A Voyage to the Fortunate Isles (1874), 
That Xew World, and Other Poems (1876), In Primrose 
Time (1886), and several charming volumes of poems 
for children. Nora Perry (1841-1893) is chiefly re- 
membered from her popular poem " After the Ball." 
Emma Lazarus (1849-1887), a Jewess of New York 
City, wrote many intense and passionate lyrics, besides 
several notable essays and translations. Her best- 
known book is Songs of a Semite (1882). Her strong- 
est poems are "In Exile," " The Crowing of the Red 
Cock," and "The Banner of the Jew." Edith Ma- 
tilda Thomas (b: 1854), a native of the Ohio Valley, 
is by far the most promising of the younger female 
poets of the West. She is best known from her work 
in Lyrics and Sonnets (1887). 

II. FICTION. 

It is in the direction of prose fiction, however, that 
woman has made her greatest advance. Magazines and 
periodicals now contain an increasingly large amount 



412 AMERICAN LITERATURE. 

of this work from her pen. As in her poetry, she has 
not often displayed large creative genius nor shown an 
ability to deal with the great problems of life. She 
has, on the whole, succeeded best with the novel of 
domestic life, and with short character studies thrown 
on a background with which she is perfectly familiar. 

1. Harriet Pkescott Spofford (b. 1835). 

" Her writings manifest a supreme sense of beauty, a revelling de- 
light in color, in music, and all the luxuries of sense." — Underwood. 

Few literary careers have opened more splendidly 
than that of Harriet Prescott Spofford. With a single 
sparkling story, "In a Cellar," published 
Ghost. 1859. in the third volume of the Atlantic, she 
God/ m i863 rose a * once ^ rom obscurity to a place 
Azarian. 1864. among the best writers of her day. After 
Legends 9 a i87i. the publication of Sir Mohan's Grhost, a 
Poems. 1882. sombre novel full of brilliant description, 

And others. 

and The Amber tf-ods, a collection of her 
best magazine tales, it was confidently predicted that she 
was to become the leading female novelist of America. 
But her later work has not fulfilled the promise of her 
early days. 

At her best, as she is in the tales in The Amber G-ods, 
Mrs. Spofford reveals a vividness of conception and a 
delicacy of touch which lose nothing when compared 
even with the most exquisite creations of French art. 
A romantic, voluptuous Eastern odor, rare indeed in 
the work of American novelists, breathes from every 
page. Nothing in her later work can compare with 



WOMAN IN LITERATURE. 413 

the sparkle and freshness of this first vintage, save, 

perhaps, a few of her later poems. Lyrics like " O 

Soft Spring Airs," " In Summer Nights," and " Under 

the Breath," are full of a pensive, dreamy beauty. 

The American poets are few who could have penned 

the lines : 

" And in the covert of their odorous depths 
The robins shake their wild, wet wings, and flood ' 
The shallow shores of dawn with music." 

Suggested Reading. — The Amber Gods. 

2. Elizabeth Stuart Phelps Ward (b. 1844). 

In marked contrast with the Cary sisters, Lucy Lar- 
com, and many other women who, without literary 
traditions, have won success amid untold Gates A j a r. 
discouragements, stands Elizabeth Stuart *£ 68 ' , 

5 ' The Silent 

Phelps, who, like Emerson and Holmes Partner. 1870. 

and Lowell, can trace her lineage in a Avis, mi. 

long line of scholarly ancestors. Her p^disf^im 

father, the Rev. Austin Phelps, a man of Friends, a Duet. 

r 1881. 

great scholarship and power, was for many songs of the 
years the leading professor in Andover igg^* 
Theological Seminary. Her mother, a Dr - Za v- 1884 - 

Jack the Fisher- 

daughter oi Professor Moses Stuart of man. 1887. 
Andover, was a novelist of great promise, \^ an9e Li ^ 6 ' 
her Sunny Side, a pleasing story of coun- And others, 
try parsonage life, selling 100,000 copies in one year. 
The daughter of this literary household grew up with 
every advantage. She had scarcely finished her school- 
days when her sketches began to appear in the leading 



414 AMERICAN LITERATURE. 

magazines, and. when she was twenty-four her The Crates 
Ajar, which went through twenty editions in one year, 
had given her a widespread literary fame. From that 
time to the present she has written on an average one 
volume a year. Her work has constantly improved in 
quality, her latest novel, A Singular Life, being the 
strongest and most finished work from her pen. 

The Gates Ajar, Miss Phelps' first significant work, 
was a notable book even aside from its wonderful popu- 
larity. It was something new in American literature 
and American theology. It attempted to win the se- 
crets of the grave ; to solve the problem of the unseen 
in terms of the seen. It is not a novel, it is rather a 
series of essays, intense almost to incoherency, bound 
by a slight thread of story. Its theology has been 
sharply debated, and its intensity and minute intro- 
spection have been criticised ; but it was a book, never- 
theless, that supplied a need. It gave an answer to 
thousands who had questioned in vain at the cold 
shrines of orthodoxy, and it brought to them their 
first real ray of hope. 

After The Crates Ajar, the most earnest and intense 
of Miss Phelps' novels is, without doubt, The Story of 
Avis, a minute and impassioned study of the innermost 
recesses of a woman's soul. 

Studies of New England Life. — But the greater part 
of Miss Phelps' work has been the sketching with 
intense colors, on a New England background, of ex- 
quisite miniatures over a thinly concealed moral. She 
is one of the leading figures in the little group of 



WOMAN W LITERATURE. 415 

women that has done in prose for New England 
humble life what Whittier did in verse. Few liter- 
ary fields have been worked with more painstaking 
care or with richer results. Mrs. Stowe (p. 334), 
with her irresistible sketches of Yankee character, is 
the leader of the group. Among its other members 
are Rose Terry Cooke (1827-1892), who has caught 
as no one else has the grim humor underlying New 
England life and character; Jane G. Austin (1831- 
1894), whose faithful studies of early colonial days 
are a real addition to American literature (p. 18) ; 
Sarah Orne Jewett, who merits a more extended 
notice ; and Mary E. Wilkins, whose accurate char- 
acterizations have made her one of the most prom- 
ising of the younger school of writers. Nearly all of 
these are at their best in short sketches, — " thumb-nail 
studies " of life and character. In this field they have 
created some of the most original and valuable work 
that has been added of late years to our literature. 

No one of the group has written stronger or more 
finished work than Elizabeth Stuart Phelps. She ex- 
cels in studies of humble life in the fishing villages 
of Massachusetts. Jack the Fisherman and The Ma- 
donna of the Tubs are prose idyls which are well- 
nigh faultless in conception and execution. All of 
her work is intense and earnest. Many of her books 
are sermons against intemperance and kindred evils. 
That she is extravagant at times in her rhetoric, and 
too emotional and strained in some of her pictures, 
can be overlooked in view of the spontaneousness of 



416 AMERICAN LITERATURE. 

her message, and the strength and delicacy of her 
literary art. 

In 1889 Miss Phelps became the wife of Herbert 
D. Ward, a son of the editor of The Independent, 
and, in collaboration with her husband, she has pro- 
duced several novels dealing with Biblical scenes and 
characters. But as these are manifestly inferior works, 
she has of late returned to her former literary domain. 
(See Vedder's American Writers of To-day.) 






Required Reading. — Jack the Fisherman ; The Story of Avi 



3. Sarah Orne Jewett (b. 1849). 






"Sarah 0. Jewett portrays the ancient, decadent, respectable, 
gentle, and winsome seaboard town, and tells of the life therein." 
— Bichardson. 

The novelist of the northern New England coast, 
as Celia Thaxter is its poet, is Sarah Orne Jewett of 
„ , South Berwick, Maine, a little countrv 

Deephaven. ' ' J 

1877 '• village not far from the Isles of Shoals. 

Country By- • A n <» i • • • i t-» 

Ways. 1881. All oi that interesting region about Forts- 

D^yUghl ° f im. m outh, and Kittery, and York, with its 

A Cou ^y Doc " odors of the ocean, its traditions of bet- 
tor. 1884. m ' 

A Marsh island, ter days, its historic family mansions fast 

AWhite Heron. g oin g to deca y> and its peculiar types of 
1886 - character, Miss Jewett knows bv heart. 

A Native of J 

Winby. 1894. She has traversed it in every part, and 

studied faithfully all of its types and 

characteristics. Her father, a physician of more than 

local fame, from her childhood had taken her with 



WOMAN IN LITERATURE. 417 

him on his professional rounds, often beguiling the 
time with tales of family history, anecdotes of his 
practice, and characterizations of the peculiar people 
that he had met during his long experience as a 
country doctor. The impressionable young novelist 
could have had no better training for her future 
work. Her first tales of village life, contributed to 
the leading magazines, won for her at once an appre- 
ciative audience which has steadily increased until the 
present day. 

Miss Jewett, like most of her school of writers, is 
at her best in the short sketch of life and character. 
Her plots are slight ; she is seldom analytic ; she deals 
more with individual peculiarities than with the uni- 
versal experiences of life, but in the portrayal of these 
individuals and their peculiar surroundings, she shows 
a wonderful power. Her delicate humor, her mastery 
of dialogue, her simple, limpid style which has been 
compared even to Hawthorne's, and her fidelity to 
nature combine to give her work a peculiar strength 
and charm. Her sketches are as minute in detail and 
as graphic in treatment as Flemish pictures. Every 
feature of the Kittery coast — rock, headland, tree, 
river, and country village — stands out clear and sharp, 
while her characters seem to live and breathe before 
us. The readers of her sketches are few who will 
not agree with James Russell Lowell, that "Nothing 
more pleasingly characteristic of rural life in New 
England has been written." 

Suggested Reading. — A White Heron; A Country Doctor. 
2e 



418 AMERICAN LITERATURE. 



4. Maky Noailles Mukfkee (b. 1850). 






"We could ill spare Miss Murfree's contribution to fiction. It is 
racy of the soil. The most exacting among our British censors will 
not venture to deny to her books the right to the distinctive epithet, 
American. ' ' — Vedder. 

What Miss Jewett and others of her school have done 
for New England rural life, has been done by scattered 
intheTennes- writers for other sections. Mary Hal- 

see^Mountains. LQCK FoQTE ^ lg47) hag portrayed Ufe in 

Down the th e mountains and mines of Colorado and 

Ravine. 1885. 

The Prophet of Idaho ; Alice French, " Octave Thanet," 

Smoky Moun- has made the world familiar with the cane- 

TnThe Ctouds. brakes of Arkansas, while Mary N. Mur- 

1886 - free has made classic ground of the Great 

The Story of < & 

Keedon Bluffs. Smoky Mountains of Tennessee. 

1837. J 

The Despot of Miss Murfree's first sketch, " The Dan 
Cov° mS i888. cin' Party at Harrison's Cove,' ; by Charles 
jpeo h ieUs tran9er E £ bert Craddock, which appeared in the 
Country. 1891. May number of the Atlantic of 1878, 
aroused great interest in literary circles. It was as new 
in scene and treatment as were Bret Harte's early 
sketches of the California mines, and it was by a new 
writer. Other sketches appeared from time to time, 
and in 1884 their author, of whom the public knew 
little save that his name was Charles Egbert Craddock 
and that his address was St. Louis, gathered eight of 
these sketches into a volume under the title In the 
Tennessee Mountains, which was immediately hailed 
both at home and abroad as something new in litera- 



. 



WOMAN IN LITERATURE. 419 

ture, the work of an author of brilliant promise. The 
story of the appearance of Charles Egbert Craddock at 
the Atlantic office one year later in the person of Miss 
Mary N. Murfree, of the incredulity of the editors, and 
of the sensation that their story caused in the reading 
world need not be dwelt upon. During the same year 
Miss Murfree published the powerful story of The 
Prophet of the Grreat Smoky Mountains, which at once 
gave her a secure place among English writers of fiction. 
The elements of Miss Murfree's success are not hard 
to discover. Like Bret Harte, she was the pioneer in 
her literary field. Her scenes are new, and her treat- 
ment of them is bold and original. Her backgrounds 
are vast and chaotic ; her characters are picturesque 
and elemental. She is perfectly familiar with her 
ground. She knows the recesses of the Tennessee 
mountains as Miss Jewett knows her native Berwick or 
as Miss Phelps knows the by-ways of Gloucester. She 
is not strong in her plots ; she is far below Miss Jewett 
in her nianipulation of dialogue and her use of humor, 
but she has the true novelist's insight and imagination. 
Under her pen the rough mountains and mountaineers 
are transfigured. We see them as through a Claude 
Lorrain glass. No writer has painted such wonderful 
pen pictures of the varying phenomena of mountains. 
She has a genius for description. Beneath her hand her 
mountains stand out clear and sharp like paintings. 
In all their moods by day and night, in the dazzling 
lights of winter, and in the mellow glow of autumn 
they stand displayed upon her canvas, — a rare cabi- 



420 AMERICAN LITERATURE. 

net of pictures such as few authors of any land can 
show. 

Except in one novel, Where the Battle was Fought, 
a production inferior to her other work, Miss Murfree 
has devoted all her powers to this one field. Her realm 
is a small one, but within its limits she will always rule 
supreme. (See Vedder's American Writers of To-day.*) 

Suggested Reading. — In the Tennessee Mountains ; The 
Prophet of the Great Smoky Mountains. 

5. Frances Hodgson Burnett (b. 1849). 

To have written a successful juvenile is surely a 
literary achievement of note. Many have entered this 
That Lasso' difficult field, but only a few have left 
AFaV'Bar- ' ** w ^ n distinction. Mrs. Child (1802- 
barian. 1880. 1880), that charming writer " with the head 

Through One J & 

Administra- of a woman and the heart of a child," and 

tion. 1883. 

Little Lord her contemporary, Jacob Abbott (1803- 
Fauntieroy. lg79 ^ with his r o11o Books and numerous 
And others. other juveniles, were the first to win unqual- 
ified success with stories for children. Mrs. A. D. T. 
Whitney (b. 1824), with her Faith Gartners Girlhood 
and A Summer in Leslie Goldthwaite's Life, has written 
stories which charm old and young alike ; and Miss 
Alcott, the leader of American juvenile writers, has pro- 
duced works which are classics in their field (p. 229). 

But of all juveniles the one, perhaps, most widely 
known is Little Lord Fauntleroy, which first appeared 
in 1886 in the columns of St. Nicholas. Before its 
publication Mrs. Burnett had been widely known as 



WOMAN IN LITERATURE. 421 

the author of That Lass o 1 Lowries, a powerful tale of 
life in her native Lancashire, England. This she had 
followed by several tales of American life, none of 
them, however, equal to her first work, but with the 
publication of Little Lord Fauntleroy her name became 
at once a household word both in America and England, 
and it is perhaps in connection with this work that she 
will be longest remembered. 

The charm of Little Lord Fauntleroy is due more to 
the perfection and sweetness of its style than to its 
truth to life. Such a faultless creature as Fauntleroy is 
clearly impossible, and yet with such art, with such 
simplicity and freshness has he been handled, that he 
delights old and young. There is no doubt that he is a 
real addition to the list of original characters which 
America has added to the gallery of fiction. 

Other Writers. — Among the great number of other 
female novelists may be mentioned Rebecca Harding 
Davis (b. 1831), whose Life in the Iron Mills and Wait- 
ing for the Verdict were popular in their day ; Louise 
Chandler Moulton (b. 1835), who has succeeded in 
both prose and verse ; Blanche Willis Howard (b. 
1847), whose sparkling novels One Summer and Gruenn 
have not lost their first popularit}^ ; Mary Hartwell 
Catherwood (b. 1847), whose powerful stories of the 
period covered by Parkman give no uncertain promise ; 
and Margaret D eland, whose graceful verse in 
The Old Garden, and her strong novels John Ward, 
Preacher, and Sidney have already given her a secure 
place among American authors. 



XXIX. 

THE LATER NOVELISTS. 

The Flood of Novels. — The literary historian of a 
century hence may find that the years since the war — 
a period that to contemporary eyes seems like a chaos 
of diffusive tendencies — were in reality the era of prose 
fiction. The magnitude of the flood of novels and 
tales that now surges through newspaper and magazine, 
and in bound form sweeps other literary products from 
the book-stands, almost exceeds belief. The novel in 
its various forms is now the chief literary diet of the 
American people. 

The causes of this great activity will be more ap- 
parent to the historian with a longer perspective, yet 
they are not wholly hidden from the contemporary 
critic. Says Stedman : 

The elder poets " fully met the need for idyllic verse, relating 
to home, patriotism, religion, and the work-day life of an orderly 
people. They did not scrutinize and vividly present the coils of 
individual feeling. Our people have outgrown their juvenescence, 
tested their manhood, and now demand a lustier regimen. They 
crave the sensations of mature and cosmopolitan experience, and 
are»bent upon what we are told is the proper study of mankind. 
The rise of our novelists was the answer to this craving. They 
depict life as it is, though rarely, as yet, in its intenser phases." 
— Poets of America. 

422 



THE LATER NOVELISTS. 423 

Aside from its abundance, the most surprising thing 
about the later fiction is its level excellence. The 
standard has been high, and writers have been obliged 
to attain to it or not be heard at all; and yet in spite 
of this, the period has been one of minor novelists. It 
has not produced one writer who can even approxi- 
mate to the stature of Poe and Hawthorne. 

The Short Story. — The fiction of the period has been 
marked by two important characteristics, — a predomi- 
nance of the literary form known as the short story, 
and an increasing tendency toward "realism." The 
short story is no new thing in American literature, — 
Irving, Hawthorne, and Poe all used it to perfection, — 
but it is only of late years that it has become recog- 
nized as a distinct branch of literary expression. Few 
literary forms require more artistic skill in their pro- 
duction. " Power of invention," says Vedder, " fertility 
of imagination, and facility of style are indispensable, 
but the first requisites are sense of proportion and 
lucidity of vision. In the short story there must be 
no fumbling with a purpose, no hazy observation, no 
indecisive movement; all must be sure, well-devised, 
clean-cut." To say that Americans lead the world in 
this difficult literary domain' is to make no idle boast. 
The French alone have produced work worthy of com- 
parison. The short story in America arose from a 
distinct demand. The busy, active " Yankee," who 
keeps in motion our vast business concerns, has little 
leisure for the two-volume novel, and he demands for 
his amusement the humorous, sparkling prose. sketch 



424 AMERICAN LITERATURE. 

that may be read without effort and be finished at a 
sitting. 

Realism. — Perhaps the most marked literary char- 
acteristic of the period, both at home and abroad, has 
been the rise of a school of novelists, who, following 
the lead of the French Zola and the Russian Tolstoi, 
have insisted upon real rather than idealized pictures 
of life. The American branch of this school, under the 
lead of James and Howells, insists that the stories have 
all been told, and that even if this were not so, the 
novel with a plot, a hero, and a culminating tragedy 
is untrue to nature. To this school a novel is simply a 
photograph of life, a mirror held up to nature without 
comment or explanation. " A novel," says Howells, "is 
a picture in which the truth to life is suffered to do its 
unsermonized office for conduct." It should deal with 
ordinary people and ordinary events and scenes. It 
should analyze character with minuteness, sketch pecul- 
iar types with photographic accuracy, refrain from 
comment upon its characters, and avoid all ^situations 
and endings not absolutely true to life. The realistic 
novelist does not idealize his characters ; he does not 
enter that ideal world of which we dream in our loftiest 
moods ; he refuses to throw upon life " the light that 
never was on sea or land " ; he deals only with the 
actual, the tangible, the earthy. All great poets and 
romancers have been realists to the extent that their 
pictures have been true to nature ; but they have seen 
the ideal in the real, and this the new school refuses to 
do. Whittier's Snow Bound and Howells' A Modern 



THE LATER NOVELISTS. 425 

Instance both present perfect pictures of the Northern 
winter, but Whittier's work not only reveals the mere 
externals, it shows, as well, the heart and soul of the 
ideal New England; while Howells describes, with 
photographic coldness, only that which actually passes 
before his eyes. 

The novelists of the period may be divided into three 
groups : the Realists, the Novelists of the Soil, and the 
Romantic Novelists. 

I. THE REALISTS. 
1. William Dean Howells (b. 1837). 

Life. — (See Vedder's American Writers of To-day. 
The chief authorities on the life and aims of W. D. 
Howells are his own writings. Few authors have writ- 
ten autobiography more delightful. His A Boy's Town, 
My Year in a Log Cabin, and My Literary Passions 
tell in detail the story of his early years. His frequent 
autobiographical sketches published in the leading 
magazines record later experiences, while his essays in 
"The Editor's Study," the best of which have been pub- 
lished in a volume entitled Criticism and Motion, give 
an accurate account of his literary ideals. His A Boy's 
Town stands near the head of a notable list of similar 
books, like Aldrich's Story of a Bad Boy, Warner's 
Being a Boy, Hale's A New England Boyhood, and 
Mark Twain's Tom Sawyer.) 

W. D. Howells, the most noted author that the Ohio 
Valley and the West have contributed to American 
literature, was born in Martin's Ferry, Ohio, March 1, 



426 AMERICAN LITERATURE. 

1837. His early education was gained to a large 
degree in his father's printing office, where he learned 
to set type at an early age, and where he was constantly 
employed until his fourteenth year, when a reverse of 
fortune compelled the family to seek other fields. For 
a year they lived in a log cabin, but the young printer 
soon afterwards found employment as a compositor on 
The Columbus State Journal, and at the age of twenty- 
two he left the case to become news editor of The 
Cincinnati Gazette. He had already begun his purely 
literary labors. His poem " By the Dead " had been 
accepted by Lowell and printed in the fifth number of 
the Atlantic. In 1860 he published with Piatt his 
maiden volume (p. 392), and during the same year 
issued a campaign life of Lincoln which, since it se- 
cured for him the appointment to the Consulship at 
Venice, may be considered the turning-point of his 
life. 

Consul at Venice (1861-1865). — Howells was in 
Europe four years, making his home in the romantic 
^ .. r .. old city of Venice, whence he made fre- 

Venetian Life. J 7 

1866 - quent excursions into other parts of Italy. 

Italian Jour- r^., ,. . , , . . , 

neys. 1867. Ihe years were ot priceless value to the 
Tuscan Cities, young author. He not only mastered the 
Modem Italian Italian language, and became familiar with 
the beauties of Italian literature and art, 
but with his frequent letters to American journals he 
laid the foundations of a lucid and flexible prose style. 
Venetian Life, a collection of these letters, which ap- 
peared in London in 1866, and Italian Journeys which 









THE LATER NOVELISTS. 427 

followed it, are worthy of a place beside Taylor's Views 
Afoot and other classics in the same field. Full of life 
and grace and the boundless enthusiasm of youth, these 
books have lost little of their early popularity. 

Editor of the Atlantic (1872-1881).— Upon his return 
from Venice, Howells was engaged for a time as writer 
for various New York journals, but in 1866 he was made 
assistant editor of the Atlantic, with which magazine he 
was connected for the next fifteen years. Suburban 
Sketches, which, since it is in the same vein as his early 
work, might have been called " Cambridge Life," ap- 
peared in 1868. Howells had found the secret of his 
strength. He could look upon life and society as 
Thoreau looked upon external nature and see what most 
observers overlooked ; he could describe with minuteness 
and accuracy ; he was master of a rare vein of playful 
humor combined with poetic fancy as delicate almost as 
Irving's, and he had acquired a pure and graceful prose 
style. High imaginative power, a wide horizon, and 
broad constructive ability had been denied him. 

As a Novelist. — Fully realizing the breadth and the 
limitation of his powers, Howells now started upon the 
work of his life. His first novel, Their , „ 

A Foregone 

Wedding Journey (1871), which recounts Conclusion. 
with minuteness the incidents of a summer The Undis- 

COVBV&cl 

tour to Niagara, has only a slender thread Country. 1880. 
of story. The secret of its strength and f^SSH im 
charm lies in the presence of those very The Rise of 

, Silas Lapham. 

elements that made Venetian Life a classic, 1885. 

a statement which is true in a varying mer% i886. " 



428 AMERICAN LITERATURE. 

April Hopes. degree of all the author's later work. He 

loo7 . ° 

A Hazard of depends not on manipulation of plot and 

New Fortunes. . \ ■ 

1891. rush 01 incident, but upon refinement or 

Charwe!' ld i89i. s ty ie > skilful elaboration, and minuteness 
The Coast of an d accuracy of detail. Howells' theory 

Bohemia. 1893. _ J J 

A Traveller of realism can best be learned from his 
1891. volume, Criticism and Fiction. To him 

Many others. realism does not mean a grovelling in the 
sensual and disgusting; it rather means a faithful de- 
scription of life as it is really lived by the majority of 
mankind, full of commonplace even trivial experiences, 
and seldom or never rising to the heroic and the sublime. 
Stripped of their charm of style, their accuracy of 
characterization, and their abundant humor, his novels 
would at once become insufferable, but with these quali- 
ties they are among the most charming creations in our 
literature. 

The lightness of Howells' touch, his genuine wit, and 
his mastery of dialogue appear at their best in his little 
parlor comedies like " The Mouse Trap," " The Gar- 
roters," and " The Elevator." Nothing so good in their 
line is to be found in American literature. Had he 
written nothing else he would still be remembered as the 
laureate of the trivial, who with exquisite prose style 
and sparkling humor made classics from the ordinary 
experiences of human life. 

Required Reading. — Venetian Life ; " Realism and Pseudo- 
Realism in Literature," and "The American Short Story" in 
Criticism and Fiction ; also The Rise of Silas Lapham, and " The 
Elevator." 



THE LATER NOVELISTS. 429 

2. Henry James (b. 1843). 

" He looks at America with the eyes of a foreigner and at Europe 
with the eyes of an American. ' ' — Beers. 

The founder of the realistic school in America and its 
best known representative at the present time is Henry- 
James, who has taken as his literary province what has 
been called "the international novel." Few authors, 
even of the>sprahmin caste of New England," have had 
greater early advantages. His father, Henry James, 
Senior, a theologian of high rank, whose works on such 
subjects as The Secret of Swedenborg and Society the 
Redeemed Form of Man are classics in their field, edu- 
cated his son with extreme care, taking him abroad at 
the age of twelve to complete his studies at Geneva, 
Paris, Boulogne, and Bonn. It was during these early 
years that James laid the foundations of his knowledge 
of the languages and literatures, of the society and life 
of Europe, — a knowledge which he has since made 
thorough and deep by an almost continuous residence 
abroad. Since 1869 he has visited America but once, and 
then only for a short time. Few of our authors have 
become more completely cosmopolitan. He belongs 
almost as much to Paris and to London as to America. 

James' first literary work, contributed to the Atlantic 
and to other American magazines, was in the form of 
short stories and tales, many of them of a decidedly 
romantic and even sensational nature. In 1875 he pub- 
lished Roderick Hudson, his first long novel, and since 
that time he has continued to pour out a surprising 



430 AMERICAN LITERATURE. 

amount of work, issuing sometimes as many as three 
volumes in one year. 

His Novels. — The term " the international novel," 
which has been overworked in connection with Henry 
A Passionate James, is used to designate that class of 
J, 9 ™' . ' fiction which deals with the experiences 

The American. r 

1877 - of Americans in Europe or with those of 

national Epi- Europeans in America. The American, 

The Europeans. J ames ' earliest international novel, deals 

t? 79 nj-n with a man who, having risen, like Howells' 

1879. Silas Lapham, through his own efforts to 

The Portrait of 

a Lady. 1881. fortune, seeks Europe, imagining that 
Cities ^ ' m& e mone y will break down even social bar- 

The Princess riers ; Daisy Miller pictures a pure-minded, 
Casimassima. . . 

1886. impulsive, wilful, somewhat unsophisti- 

1886. ' n ' cated American girl as seen through Euro- 

Many others, pean eyes. In An International Episode 
and The Europeans the author, reversing the glass, has 
thrown Europeans with their peculiarities and ideas upon 
a republican background. 

No one was ever better equipped for this field of fic- 
tion. So long has he resided abroad that he has become 
almost " a man without a country," one singularly 
fitted for accurate observation and impartial judgment. 
Yet few books, not even excepting Dickens' American 
Notes, have raised such a storm of American protest as 
did these early novels from James' pen. He was called 
untruthful and unpatriotic. It was charged that he 
had selected for analysis unusual types of Americans ; 
that he had described but one side of their characters ; 



THE LATER NOVELISTS. 431 

that he had told half the truth and only half. What- 
ever the justice of these accusations, it remains true 
that James has not as yet given a single picture of the 
average American tourist in Europe, nor has he painted 
the portrait of a single typical American gentleman. 

James' novels deal with externals. Character is 
shown through manners. The reader having seen an 
accurate photograph, and having listened to endless 
conversations, is left to draw his own conclusions. 
There is no passion, no glimpse into the heart. Every- 
thing is cold and correct and classical. In James' 
typical novels there is no plot, no hero, no denouement, 
no rush of incident. The leading facts of An Inter- 
national Episode could be told on two pages. Every- 
where there is analysis and photographic description. 
To James, as to Howells, a novelist is but a keen 
observer of life who lives, note-book in hand, to record 
what actually passes before his eyes ; and a novel is but 
a study in sociology whose statements are facts as valu- 
able in their way as are those in any other department 
of science. 

Sketches and Criticism. — But, after all, the best 
work from James' pen is in his short stories and his 
critical sketches. His best tales, like " The Last of the 
Valerii" and " The Madonna of the Future," written 
before he had broken away from the influence of Haw- 
thorne, and his later character sketches are among our 
very best short stories, while his Partial Portraits, his 
French Poets and Novelists, and his Hawthorne, written 
for the English Men of Letters Series, place him at 



432 AMERICAN LITERATURE. 

once near the head of the American school of critics. 
The chief charm of all of James' work lies in the ex- 
quisite finish of its style. In literary workmanship all 
of his tales are well-nigh faultless. Witty, sparkling, 
full of refinement and dainty grace, they hold the 
reader's attention, in spite of their poverty of incident, 
to the very end. 

Required Reading. — Daisy Miller; "The last of the Va- 
lerii " ; " Alfred, de Musset " in French Poets and Novelists. 

3. Edward Everett Hale (b. 1822). 

Although many, perhaps most, of the later novelists 
have been influenced by James and Ho wells, and have 
* treated their subjects from the realistic standpoint, very 
few have carried realism to its extreme. Nearly all 
have seen the ideal in the real. Even "a writer so 
studiously and narrowly realistic as Edward Everett 
Hale," says Richardson, "finds no clod too mean on 
which to stand while his eager eyes turn with the 
upward look." 

Edward Everett Hale, who is an influential clergyman 
of Boston, has won fame not only as a faithful pastor 
and a tireless philanthropist, as a scholarly 
Perhaps. 1868. lecturer and an able journalist, but as a 
Paler7. h im. short-story writer of the very first order 
Ten times One and a historian of standard rank. His 

is Ten. 1870. 

His Level Best, first story to win wide attention was " My 

1873 

in His Name. Double an( * How He Undid Me," first 
1874, published in 1859. Four vears later, at 

Philip Nolan's r . 

Friends. 1876. the floodtide of the war, he published in 



THE LATER NOVELISTS. 433 

the Atlantic his most powerful creation, Seven Spanish 

mi i»r .,, . <~\ m ,1 Cities. 1883. 

"The Man without a Country, a tale FrankUnin 
ringing with genuine patriotism. These France - 1887 - 
sketches, together with many others like 
" The Brick Moon," " The Rag Man and Rag Woman," 
and " The Skeleton in the Closet," placed him at once 
in the front rank of American writers of short stories. 

Hale, like Frank Stockton, has rare skill in making 
the wildly improbable seem like the truth. " The 
Brick Moon," a tale as unreal as Poe's " Hans Pf aal " 
or Jules Verne's From the Farth to the Moon, is so skil- 
fully manipulated that it deceives the unwary ; while 
it is commonly believed that " The Man without a 
Country " was actual history. Many of his books are 
full of a rollicking, contagious humor, and all are per- 
vaded by a cheery optimism and a kindly spirit. As a 
historian he deserves more than a passing notice. His 
Franklin in France is the authority in its field. (See 
Hale's A New England Boyhood.} 

Suggested Reading. — The five short stories mentioned above ; 
Ten times One is Ten. 

H. NOVELISTS OP THE SOIL. 

As has been already mentioned in the chapter deal- 
ing with the female novelists, there has been a marked 
tendency of late towards novels of the soil, — dialect 
novels full of local color and describing with photo- 
graphic accuracy curious provincial types. This field, 
which has furnished to woman her greatest literary 
opportunity, and which has also been cultivated by 

2f 



434 AMERICAN LITERATURE. 



many strong novelists of the other sex, appears on the 
whole to be the most promising portion of our literary 
domain. 

1. John Townsend Trowbridge (b. 1827). 

It is a significant fact that the best studies of contem- 
porary New England life and character have been made 
by women. The only male novelists who have made 
a substantial success in this department are Thomas 
Wentworth Higginson (b. 1823) and John Town- 
send Trowbridge. Higginson has won literary laurels in 
many fields. His poems are finished and beautiful, and 
his essays, like Outdoor Papers, Oldport Days, and 
Atlantic Essays, are valuable additions to our literature, 
but he will longest be remembered from his Malbone, 
an Oldport Romance, a book that breathes the life and 
spirit of New England. 

Trowbridge, a native of Ogden, New York, but since 
™ ,*. D • x... 1848 a resident of Boston, has won success 

Father Bright- ' 

hopes. 1853. i n three widely differing literary depart- 

Neighbor Jack- i-» i • 

wood. 1857. ments. By his numerous stories, contnb- 

g^ound dB mt uted t0 Our Youn 9 FMs i of which he 

Cudjo'sCave. was for a time the editor, and to The 
i860. 

Coupon Bonds. Youth's Companion, he has made himself 

1871 

the most popular of American writers for 
boys; by his powerful novels like Neighbor Jackwood 
and Coupon Bonds, he has placed himself in the front 
rank of delineators of provincial life ; while by his 
poems like " The Vagabonds," first published in the 
Atlantic of 1863, "Darius Green and his Flying Ma- 



THE LATER NOVELISTS. 435 

chine," and many others, he has won general recognition 
as a true poet. 

Trowbridge's pictures of New England both in prose 
and verse show evidence of a master hand. Not only 
are they minutely true in their characterizations and in 
their descriptions of externals, but they reveal a deep 
knowledge of the spirit of New England. Under the 
genuine, often rollicking, fun of the novelist's descrip- 
tions lurk all the pathos and tragedy of provincial life. 
It is this dramatic element, this perception of the ideal 
in the real, that will keep Neighbor JacJcwood and 
" Darius Green " alive when the work of the mere 
realist is forgotten. 

Suggested Reading. — Neighbor Jackwood and the poems " The 
Vagabonds," " At Sea," " Darius Green and his Flying Machine," 
" Midsummer," and " A Home Idyl." 

2. Edward Eggleston (b. 1837). 

Of all the Ohio Valley group of authors, the only 
novelist — save perhaps Alice Cary — who has thrown 
the spell of his genius over his native Th H ■ 
region is Edward Eggleston, whose broad Schoolmaster. 
descriptions of frontier life in Southern The End of the 
Indiana during; the early " forties " are ™ ' 

b J The Mystery of 

among the most enjoyable creations in MetropoUsviiie. 
our literature. Eggleston's early train- The Circuit 

, • t », £ -i - Eider. 1874. 

ing gave him a peculiar fitness lor his R 1878 
work. Born amid the scenes which he The Hoosier 

Schoolboy. 

describes and serving for some years as 1883. 

a Methodist circuit rider through a wide i&w. raysons ' 



436 AMERICAN LITERATURE. 

extent of frontier, he came into close contact with an 
interesting region during its most picturesque period. 
He at length drifted into journalism, and in 1870 
went to New York, where he was for a time literary 
editor of The Independent. In 1871 he published his 
first novel, The Hoosier Schoolmaster, a work that is, 
perhaps, the freshest and most spontaneous, though 
not the most finished, of all his novels. It was in 
every sense a pioneer book. In 1871 the vast wealth 
of material that the West and the South were to fur- 
nish to the novelist lay undeveloped, almost unsus- 
pected. Bret Harte's tales of California were studies 
of rough men in a wild environment; Eggleston's 
novels dealt with home life amid the privations and 
restrictions of the remote frontier. The Hoosier School- 
master was followed in rapid succession by other novels 
describing the same field, all of them full of quaint 
figures, boisterous fun, and picturesque situations. The 
value of these novels as pictures of one phase of 
American life is very great. Their author has the 
true pioneer earnestness, energy, and robustness, — 
qualities which he displays on every page. He describes 
with a photographic accuracy that is at times almost too 
minute, since his narrative becomes often not a work of 
art but a mere record of fact. But all faults of mere 
technique are easily overlooked when one considers the 
author's wealth of humor and pathos, his fidelity to 
nature, and his true dramatic power. 

Despite his unqualified success as a novelist, it is 
quite probable that Dr. Eggleston will ultimately be 



THE LATER NOVELISTS. 437 

classed among the historians. Since 1879, Tecumseh. 
when he resigned the pastorate of the Pocahontas and 
Church of Christian Endeavor in Brook- P^hatan. 
lvn, he has devoted his energies almost Brant and Red 

J . . . . •-,,-,. -n Jacket. 1879. 

entirely to historical studies. For many Montezumam 

years he has been gathering material for 188 °- 

what he wishes to be his master work, — United States. 

1888 

a comprehensive history of life in the thir- 
teen Colonies. Judging from the chapters of this great 
work that have been already published from time to 
time in the Century Magazine, it is certainly safe to 
prophesy that it will rank very high among the stan- 
dard histories. (See Vedder's American Writers of To- 
day). 

Suggested Reading. — The Hoosier Schoolmaster ; Tecumseh. 

3. George Washington Cable (b. 1844). 

Like Eggleston and Harte and Miss Murfree, George 
W. Cable has added a new province to the domain of 
fiction. Born in the picturesque old city Old Creole 
of New Orleans, and forced by poverty at T ^ Grandis . 
an early age to enter upon a mercantile s " nes - 188 °; 

J ° L Madame Del- 

career, where he came daily in contact phine. 1881. 
with people of every class, he learned by 1883. 
heart the habits of life and thought of the ^venture. 
Louisiana Creoles, a people peculiarly dis- John March, 

tt- n in Southerner. 

tinct and individual. His first sketches 1894. 
of Creole life, which, after appearing in Scribner's 
Monthly, were collected under the title Old Creole 
Days, caused a decided sensation among novel readers. 






438 AMERICAN LITERATURE. 

As with Miss Murfree's sketches, which had just begun 
to appear in the Atlantic, it was hard to believe that 
such characters and such an environment really existed 
within the bounds of the United States. One year 
later there appeared the Grrandissimes, the most power- 
ful American novel written since the war, and this was 
followed in quick succession by Madame Delphine and 
Dr. Sevier. 

These three novels represent the highest reach of 
Cable's literary achievement, and they form a trilogy 
that has been rarely surpassed in American literature. 
Not only do they describe a strange people and a 
peculiar social system, but they display these against 
a background even more strange and unreal. " The 
swamp country of Louisiana," says Cable, " is a region 
of incessant natural paradoxes ;" it is a "fretwork of 
natural dykes and sluices," and "broad bayous on 
whose banks are tangled forests reeking with pestilen- 
tial odors." 

" From the boughs of the dark, broad-spreading, live oak, and 
the phantom-like arms of lofty cypresses, the long, motionless pen- 
dants of pale green moss point down to their inverted images in 
the unruffled waters beneath them. Nothing breaks the wide- 
spread silence. The light of the declining sun at one moment 
brightens the tops of the cypresses, at another glows like a fur- 
nace behind their black branches, or, as the voyager reaches a 
western turn of the bayou, swings slowly round and broadens 
down in dazzling crimsons and purples upon the mirror of the 
stream. Now and then, from out some hazy shadow, a heron, 
white or blue, takes silent flight, an alligator crossing the stream 
sends out long, tinted bars of widening ripple, or on some high, 
fire-blackened tree a flock of roosting vultures, silhouetted on the 



THE LATER NOVELISTS. 439 

sky, linger with half-opened, unwilling wing, and flap away by 
ones and twos until the tree is bare." — The Creoles of Louisiana. 

These quaint characters and strange scenes have 
been portrayed by Cable with rare skill. He is not a 
cold realist. He describes with fulness and accuracy, 
yet he throws over all his landscapes the mellow atmos- 
phere of romance. His Creoles are drawn with patient 
care from living models, yet they are colored with the 
warm pigments of imagination. 

Cable's power as a novelist does not, as one critic 
has maintained, " come from his materials and his work- 
manship." His novels, while masterpieces of literary 
art, were written from the fulness of a heart sincere 
and pure. They are instinct with intensity and power. 
They are not confined merely to the surface of things. 
Their roots reach down deep into the aluvium that 
underlies all human experience. They are dramas 
teaching with new characters and strange scenery the 
old lessons of human life. (See Vedder's American 
Writers of To-day.) 

Required Reading. — The Grandissimes ; "Au Large" in 
Bonaventure. 

4. Thomas Nelson Page (b. 1853). 

"As Mrs. Stowe was the potent chronicler of the harsher side of 
slave life, in Uncle Tom's Cabin, so Mr. Page is the faithful historian 
of the kindly relation of master and servant under the old regime." — 

H. V. Washington. 

The plantation negro with his curious dialect and 
his grotesque superstitions has furnished, when pro- 
jected against the rich background of the days before 



440 AMERICAN LITERATURE. 

the war, a rare opportunity for a small group of South- 
ern novelists. As portrayed by such writers as Joel 
Chandler Harris (b. 1848) and Thomas Nelson Page, | 
he has become a new character in the world's fiction. | 
Harris, a native of Georgia and for many years the . 
editor of an influential journal, the Atlanta Constitution, 
has won a deserved fame with his record of the quaint 
philosophy and marvellous tales of Uncle Remus. No 
more charming contribution has ever been made to the 
department of folk-lore. The author has a lofty con- 
ception of his work, and his unqualified success is evi- 
dence that he has not fallen far short of realizing his 
ideal. " If the language of Uncle Remus," he says in 
his preface, "fails to give vivid tints of the really 
poetic imagination of the negro ; if it fails to embody 
the quaint and homely humor which was his most 
prominent characteristic; if it does not suggest a cer- 
tain picturesque sensitiveness, — a curious exultation of 
mind and temperament not to be expressed in words, — 
then I have reproduced the form of dialect merely, and 
not the essence, and my attempt may be counted a 
failure." 

The most promising novelist of the South after George 
W. Cable, is Thomas Nelson Page of Virginia, whose 
first significant tale, " Marse Chan," appeared in Scribners 
Magazine in 1883. The tales that followed this first 
success, "Unc' Edinburgh Drowndin'," "Meh Lady," 
and others, which were collected in 1887 under the title 
In Ole Virginia, rank among the most perfect of Ameri- 
can short stories. Nearly all are tales of the old days, 



THE LATER NOVELISTS. 441 

full of sentiment and pathos and humor, and a charming 

simplicity. Page understands the Virginia negro as 

perfectly as Harris knows Uncle Remus, and all of his 

sketches are minutely true to nature in every particular. 

He has not always confined himself to dialect tales. 

His powerful sketches, "A Soldier of the Empire," 

and "Elsket," display a prodigality of power, which, 

if rightly directed, may in the future produce the long- 

looked-for great American novel. 

Suggested Reading. — Uncle Remus ; In Ole Virginia; 
"Elsket." 

HI. THE ROMANTIC NOVELISTS. 

The novelist of the purely romantic school does not 
seek to add to the world's fund of facts by making minute 
studies of types and environments ; he does not aim to 
sharpen his reader's eyes to see more clearly the misery 
and filth about him; he does not care for the analysis of 
character for its own sake, nor for the teaching of moral 
lessons; his one thought is of pleasing his reader, of 
complying with that most natural of all demands, — 
" Tell me a story." With him a novel has a beginning 
and a middle and an end ; and it deals with an idealized 
life, one that can for a moment lift its reader from his 
sordid surroundings and show him glimpses of the world 
of which he dreams. Not many of the later novelists 
have belonged unreservedly to the romantic school. It 
has been an era in which the study of peculiar environ- 
ments has received unusual attention, yet here and there 
has been found one who has preferred to look away from 
the real into a world of his own creation. 



442 AMERICAN LITERATURE. 

Fitz-James O'Brien (1828-1861). 

The names of Fitz-James O'Brien and Theodore Win- 
throp (1828-1862), two young writers of great promise, 
members of the same regiment in the war in which 
they were to lose their lives, will go down in our liter- 
ary history side by side. O'Brien, a native of Ireland 
who spent only the last ten years of his life in America, 
was a genius of almost the very first order. He was 
another Goldsmith, thriftless and wayward, generous 
even to excess, gentle and lovable. But, unlike Gold- 
smith, he had a fascinating personality and a mind elec- 
tric in its action. Some of his most brilliant sketches 
were made at a sitting. " The Diamond Lens," his 
best-known creation, stands near the head of Ameri- 
can short stories. Winthrop, who was a descendant of 
Governor Winthrop, is remembered from several power- 
ful novels, posthumously published. Of these John 
Brent, a stirring tale full of the exhilaration and glow 
of life in the open air, is by far the best. 

Suggested Reading. — "The Diamond Lens," "The Gallop 
of Three " in John BrenL 

Edward Payson Eoe (1838-1888). 

If he is most successful in literature who is most 
widely popular, and who exerts the most far-reaching 
Barriers influence, then E. P. Roe must be counted 

TFaltmu^' amon g the most successful of American 
mined. novelists. Howells and James, Cable and 

From Jest to 

Earnest. Craddock, appeal to the literary connois- 



THE LATER NOVELISTS. 443 

seur, to the educated and the cultured ; Roe 9i en j n9 t % a r 
is the novelist of the great middle class Nature's Serial 

StOTV 

which constitutes the reading majority. Near ' t0 
His novels are singularly fitted to appeal Nature ' s Heart. 
to the class for which they were written. Their author 
was a clergyman who wrote his books with a moral 
almost a religious purpose, a fact that disarmed the 
suspicious ; he dealt with domestic scenes and with 
characters in humble life, and he mingled sentiment 
and sensation with a judicious hand. His novels have 
no high literary merit; their style is labored, often 
pretentious, and their plots and situations are conven- 
tional to a degree. " Through struggle to victory " 
might be given as the motto of them all, the victory in 
each being celebrated with the chiming of wedding bells. 
But despite their artistic defects these novels cannot 
be overlooked by the literary historian. They have 
retained their popularity to a wonderful degree, and 
they have exerted no small influence for good on a 
large audience that cares little for more classic litera- 
ture. The earnestness of the author, his faith and 
tenderness and deep conviction, are in all his work, 
and although his books cannot hope to go down to 
posterity with the great works of art, they must, never- 
theless, be counted among the successful creations of 
American literature. 

Francis Marion Crawford (b. 1854). 

Few American authors, not even excepting Henry 
James, have had a more cosmopolitan experience than 



444 AMERICAN LITERATURE. 

Mr. Isaacs. h as Francis Marion Crawford. Born in 
A Roman Italy, where his father, Thomas Crawford, 

Singer Qne Q £ ^q greatest of American sculptors, 

Zoroaster. ° i 

Paui Patoff. was temporarily residing, he was educated 
sTnfiZTo' at Harvard > at Trinity College, Cambridge, 
Don Orsino. at Karlsruhe and Heidelberg, and at the 

CasaBraecio. University f Rome< After a wan dering 

And others. J _ & 

career, which included several years in 
India, he finally, in 1884, settled down near Sorrento, 
Italy, where he has since resided. His first novel, Mr. 
Isaacs, a romantic tale of India, appeared in 1882, and 
since that time he has produced novels at the rate of 
nearly two volumes each year. 

As a novelist Crawford stands midway between the 
realists and the idealists. Some of his novels, like Mr. 
Isaacs and The Witch of Prague, are romances pure and 
simple, while others, like the Saracinesca group, incline 
somewhat toward realism ; but in all of his work he has 
freely mingled the romantic with the real. "Mr. Craw- 
ford's artistic creed," says Vedder, "is not complex: 
the novel must deal chiefly with love ; it must be clean 
and sweet, since its tale is for all mankind ; it must be 
interesting; its realism must be of three dimensions, 
not fiat and photographic ; its romance must be truly 
human. What he tries to do is to ' make little pocket- 
theatres out of words.' " 

It is as yet too early to assign to Crawford his 
place among American novelists, since his work has 
been before the public but little over a decade, but 
it can be said with safety that few novelists of the 



THE LATER NOVELISTS. 445 

younger group have given evidence of greater powers. 
There is a strong dramatic element about all of his best 
novels which lifts them at times into the highest realm 
of literary art. His chief defects thus far have been 
the result of hasty work. With mature powers and 
with more experience he may yet produce novels that 
will rank with the great masterpieces of English fiction. 

Suggested Reading. — Saracinesca, and The Novel: What It 
Is. 

Frank Eichard Stockton (b. 1834). 

" He is surely one of the most inventive of talents, discovering not 
only a new kind of humor and fancy, but accumulating an inexhausti- 
ble wealth of details in each fresh achievement; the least of which 
would be riches from another hand." — Hoivells. 

Frank R. Stockton is a writer who refuses to be classi- 
fied. View him from any standpoint and he forms a class 
of one. He is distinctively a writer of Rudder Grange. 
short sketches, yet he cannot be classed T T \ e g ^ c f v or the 
with other American writers of short The Late Mrs. 

Null. 

stories. He is not a realist. His sketches The Casting 

, . - Away of Mrs. 

contain no analysis, they are true to no Leeks and Mrs. 
region as yet upon the maps, and his TheBumnt ^ 
characters are creations rather than photo- The Hundredth 

Man. 

graphs. Yet he is really not a romanticist, The Bee-Man of 
•for, while he deals with an idealized region ^Adventures 
and people, his sketches have little move- °^ aptain 
ment and almost no plot, and they are And others, 
without sentiment or moral. While all of his tales are 
full of irresistible humor, he cannot be classed among 
the American humorists like Browne and Clemens. 



446 • AMERICAN LITERATURE. 

He uses neither irreverence nor exaggeration, — his 
humor is Stocktonesque rather than American. 

Stockton first came into general notice in 1879 
through his sparkling story, Rudder Grange, which 
appeared in Scribners Monthly. Shortly afterwards 
he published his typical sketch, " The Lady or the 
Tiger?" which immediately became one of the most 
famous of short stories. From that time he has been 
among the best-known and most popular of the later 
American writers. 

The distinctive feature of Stockton's work consists 
in its strangely real yet unreal' personages and situa- 
tions. The author deals with a world of fantasy, yet 
so skilfully does he manipulate his materials that the 
most marvellous situations seem like mere common- 
places. His tales are logical throughout. They con- 
duct the reader through the most absurd situations and 
the most unheard-of regions with absolute gravity, and 
the reader often finds himself accepting without a mur- 
mur conclusions which could be true only in a world of 
fantasy. 

Stockton's longer stories, like The Hundredth Man 
and The Late Mrs. Null, are of very moderate interest. 
He is at his best in his short sketches, like " Negative 
Gravity," "The Transferred Ghost," and "The Remark- 
able Wreck of the Thomas Hyke." In this peculiar field 
he has had no rival. 

Other Novelists. — Only a passing mention can be 
given to the majority of the younger romantic school. 
Their work has often been done with surpassing skill ; 



THE LATER NOVELISTS. 447 

often it has been received with extraordinary favor by 
the public, but on the whole it has had no far-reaching 
significance. Among the more prominent of its mem- 
bers may be mentioned Lew Wallace (b. 1823), 
whose Ben Hur, a Tale of the Christ, with its graphic 
pictures of Oriental life during the first century, has 
had a greater popularity than any other book written 
since the war; Captain Charles King (b. 1844), 
whose tales of army life on the plains stand alone in 
their field ; Julian Hawthorne (b. 1846), a son of 
Nathaniel Hawthorne, whose Bressant, Archibald Mal- 
maison, Idolatry, and Sebastian Strome are full of weird 
conceptions ; and Arthur Sherburne Hardy (b. 
1847), whose epigrammatic and finished romances, But 
Yet a Woman and Passe Rose, with their exquisite 
individualizing of character and their almost perfect 
literary art, are among the strongest and most stimu- 
lating productions of recent fiction. 



XXX. 

THE HUMORISTS. 

American Humor. — The most original literary achieve- 
ment of the present period, the one perhaps that will 
stand most sharply prominent when the era fades far- 
ther into the past, has been the development of what 
has been called "literature of the soil." The rise and 
growth of the novel of provincial life has already been 
dwelt upon ; it remains to consider one more literary 
product that smacks of the soil, — the work of the 
American humorist. 

Humor is no new thing in our literature ; the first 
real American book, Knickerbocker 's History of New 
York, was broadly, irresistibly humorous, while Holmes 
and Lowell, and many another of the earlier school, 
were mirth-makers .of the first order. Yet Irving's 
humor is of the English type. It depends on charac- 
terization, on minute description, on sympathetic in- 
sight. Holmes' brilliant bon mots are more French than 
American. Lowell, it is true, caught the true Yankee 
drollery to perfection, yet his Hosea Biglow does not 
represent the whole American people. While the humor 
of all these masters is of an imperishable kind, it does 
not, as a European would say, have the flavor of the 
American soil. It remained for Artemus Ward and his 

448 



THE HUMORISTS. 449 

followers to interpret the true American humor, which, 
while it may be of inferior quality, is, nevertheless, 
something new under the sun. 

The Americans are a nation of jokers. They " take 
a facetious view of life," says Professor Boyesen, " and 
extract the greatest possible amount of amusement out 
of every situation. It is by this trait, above all, that 
Americans are differentiated from all other nations. It 
is apt to be one of the first observations of the intelli- 
gent foreigner who lands upon our shores, that all 
things, ourselves included, are with us legitimate sub- 
jects for jokes. An all-levelling democracy has tended 
to destroy the sense of reverence which hedges certain 
subjects with sanctity, guarding them against the shafts 
of wit." The chief ingredients of the representative 
American humor seem to be irreverence, exaggeration, 
and a skilful mingling of incongruities. 

Charles Farrar Browne, "Artemus Ward" 
(1834-1867). 

"The humorist who first gave to the world a taste of the humor 
which characterizes the whole American people." — Howells. 

The name of Charles Farrar Browne calls forth both 
a smile and a tear. If ever America produced a genius, 
one who delivered his message because it 
was in him and must come forth, then His Book. 
Browne was the man. For him the world uisTraZS! a '' 
was upside down, the incongruous was the Artemus Ward 

° in London. 

real, and he could no more help saying 

" funny things " than he could help being natural. 



450 AMERICAN LITERATURE. 

Even his life was full of incongruities. He wrote th< 
works that made his name almost a synonym for mirth, 
while the shadow of an incurable disease was lowering 
darkly over him, and he died with a jest upon his lips 
at the very opening of his career. 

The leading facts in Browne's life are soon told. 
Born at Waterford, Maine, in a humble home, he early 
turned for support, like Taylor and Ho wells and many 
another American author, to the printer's trade, which 
he followed in different capacities almost to the end of 
his life. He was connected with various journals, both 
as writer and editor, in Boston, Toledo, and Cleveland, 
and finally, in 1860, he drifted to New York, where he 
was for a time connected with the brilliant but short- 
lived comic weekly, Vanity Fair. During the last years 
of his life he lectured extensively both in America and 
England. His peculiar humor so captivated the British 
that they hailed him as " Artemus the delicious," and 
even made him one of the editors of Punch. But he 
lived only a few months to enjoy his well-earned 
honors. 

The distinctive feature of Browne's humor, one that 
characterizes all later American products in the same 
field, is its seemingly plausible situations and its unex- 
pected turns. " Artemus Ward," the proprietor of the 
famous panorama, did not slap his knee and roar with 
the audience; but with a serious face and a somewhat 
melancholy voice he recited his story, with a perplexed 
and surprised look when his hearers found anything in 
his remarks at which to laugh. His most telling jokes 



THE HUMORISTS. 451 

were told with the utmost plausibility when the audi- 
ence was most completely off its guard. 

Browne has added a new figure to the gallery of 
American fiction. His "Artemus Ward," whom he 
! represented as a droll, unlettered, somewhat coarse 
travelling showman, is as original as " Natty Bumppo" 
and as thoroughly American. (See Haweis' American 
Humorists.^) 

Suggested Reading. — Artemus Ward : His Travels. 

Samuel Langhorne Clemens, "Mark Twain" 

(b. 1835). 

" Mark Twain's strong points are his facile but minute observation, 
his power of description, a certain justness and right proportion, and 
withal a great firmness of touch and a peculiar — I had almost said 
personal — vein of humor. " — H. B. Haweis. 

The work of acquainting the world with " the humor 
which characterizes the whole American people," which 
was begun by Browne, has been continued i nn0C ents 
to the present day by Samuel Langhorne „ roa ,.' T , ' 

r j j a Roughing It. 

Clemens. He, indeed, is the representa- 1872 - 

tive of " the ivhole American people." He of Tom Sawyer. 

smacks strongly of the soil, not of one A Tramp 

locality alone like so many of our writers, AbroacL 188 °- 

J J The Prince and 

but of the whole broad continent. Few the Pauper. 

men have had a more varied experience. Life on the 

Born in a frontier town in Missouri at i%j&™ sippi ' 

a time when that State was in its most HucMeberry 

Finn. 1884. 

picturesque phase, he passed his boyhood A Yankee at 

, . . t i * . King Arthur's 

days m an environment peculiarly Amen- Court. 1889. 



452 AMERICAN LITERATURE. 



. 



can. After receiving a liberal education in that mos 
practical of universities, a country printing office, he 
began while yet a mere boy a wandering career as a 
compositor, during which he lived successively in St. 
Louis, Cincinnati, Philadelphia, and New York. In 
1851 he abandoned the composing room, and for the 
next few years was a pi^>t on the Mississippi River. 
He next turned westward. He was appointed Secre- 
tary of the Territory of Nevada in 1861, and during 
the next six years he was successively an editor in 
Virginia City, a miner in Nevada and California, a 
reporter in San Francisco and the Sandwich Islands, 
and finally a lecturer throughout California. In 1867 
he came East again, published The Jumping Frog and 
Other Sketches, under the pseudonym " Mark Twain," 
and started on the European tour that was to make 
him famous. Innocents Abroad, which appeared two 
years later, placed him at once among the most popu- 
lar of American writers. After a short journalistic 
career he at length settled in Hartford, Connecticut, 
where he has since resided, a near neighbor to Mrs. 
Stowe and Charles Dudley Warner. 

The chief elements of Mark Twain's humor are irrev- 
erence and exaggeration. Innocents Abroad is the very 
antipodes of works like Pencillings by the Way. It is 
Europe without its haze of romance, as seen by the cold 
eyes of a Yankee reporter to whom nothing is sacred. 
In works like Roughing It and Life on the Mississippi, 
the humor consists largely of exaggeration which is 
humorous because of the extreme incongruity of the 



THE HUMORISTS. 453 

objects compared, yet, notwithstanding its obvious im- 
possibility and its utter absurdity, the author tells his 
story with such innocence and seriousness that it is 
only with a struggle that the reader refrains from 
believing every word. 

But Mark Twain's humor is not always a mere 
bundle of aimless absurdities. " He is supposed to 
lie like the truth," says one critic, " yet in my opinion 
he oftener speaks truth like lies." Few men hate cant 
and shams more intensely than he. His irreverent jokes 
in Innocents Abroad arose from no lack of a sense of 
beauty. There are few more beautiful descriptions in 
our literature than his well-known comparison between 
lakes Como and Tahoe. His sarcasm is aimed at that 
class of tourists who go into raptures at the bidding of 
the guide-book simply because it is the proper thing to 
do. Innocents Abroad was a book with a mission. It 
cleared the atmosphere of a surprising amount of false 
enthusiasm ; " it laughed away," says Vedder, " the sen- 
timental, the romantic book of travels." 

But if Mark Twain's jokes, delightful as they some- 
times are, were all that were to keep him from oblivion, 
he might be ranked as only a passing phenomenon. His 
writings, unlike Artemus Ward's, are not mere fusillades 
of jokes. All of his books have a skilfully drawn, even 
delicate, background of description and characterization. 
He would still rank high as an author had he not writ- 
ten a single humorous passage. His graphic descrip- 
tions of life and scenery on the Mississippi, in the 
mountains and mines of Nevada, Utah, and California 



454 AMERICAN LITERATURE. 

during their most picturesque era, are photographically 
true, in every particular. Taken for all in all, he is 
the prince of entertainers. He is intensely original. 
He mingles boisterous fun with delicate description, 
broad characterization with skilful narrative, and over 
all he throws the charm of a rare personality, one 
peculiarly American, and as impossible to define as is 
the charm of the Indian Summer. 

Suggested Reading. — Innocents Abroad; Roughing It. 

Other Humorists. — Of the vast amount of humorous 
literature that has surged through the periodicals of 
half a century, only a very small amount has been saved 
from oblivion. Professional humorists from the days 
of Seba Smith, who lampooned the administration of 
Jackson, down to Burdette and Bill Nye, have 
abounded, but those who have created fun and noth- 
ing else have had for their reward only a contemporary 
fame. Among the few who deserve a passing mention 
are Henry W. Shaw, " Josh Billings " (1818-1885), 
who mingled with his fun some very sound maxims, and 
David Ross Locke, "Petroleum V. Nasby" (1833- 
1888), whose humorous, satirical letters from the " Con- 
fedrit X Roads " were widely influential during the 
reconstruction period following the Civil War. 

THE ESSAYISTS. 

Josiah Gilbert Holland (1819-1881). 

J. G. Holland was born in Belchertown, Massachu- 
setts, July 24, 1819, and was educated in the North- 



THE ESSAYISTS. 455 

ampton high school. After studying med- The Bay Path. 

icine, which he practised for some years in Timothy Tit- 

Springfield, he went into the South; taught To Young 

school for a time in Richmond, Virginia, ^f^' Sl ^' 

and still later was superintendent of 1858 - 

schools in Vicksburg, Mississippi. Upon Career, i860, 

his return to the North he became con- PamlhaJsub^ 

nected with The Springfield Republican. jl cts \ 1865 - 

r v j r t ' Katrina. 1866. 

and in 1870 he was made editor of Scrib- Arthur Bonni- 
ner's Monthly, now The Century, a position sevenoaks. 
which he held until his death. 1875 - 

Many others. 

Holland's writings fall naturally into 
three classes: poems, novels, and essays and papers. 
His fame as a poet depends on his long narrative 
poems, Bitter Sweet and Katrina, which, despite their 
moralizing tendencies and their manifest lack of poetic 
inspiration, were at one time highly popular with the 
lovers of the sentimental. His novels deserve more 
careful attention. They are faithful studies of Ameri- 
can life and character. "None of our writers," says 
Richardson, "better understood the average national 
heart." But Holland was not a great literary artist and 
he has not portrayed in enduring colors this life which 
he understood. He was first of ail a moralist. He was 
at his best in his lay sermons to the young and in his 
papers on familiar subjects. The didactic and the mor- 
alizing are in everything he wrote, even in his poems 
and novels. His Timothy Titcomb letters are excellent. 
Their style is plain and homely, their subjects are often 
commonplace, yet they set true ideals before the reader 



456 AMERICAN LITERATURE. 

in such an earnest, honest way that they can hardly fail 
to impress and benefit. 

As editor of an influential magazine, Holland was for 
a time a conspicuous figure. His work was widely read 
and enthusiastically reviewed, but time seems to be 
reversing the judgment of his contemporaries, and the 
author has been of late more and more neglected. 

Donald Grant Mitchell (b. 1822). 

' ' Mr. Mitchell more truly than any other American writer has in- 
herited the literary tradition of Irving' s time and school. There is 
the same genial and sympathetic attitude toward his readers; the 
same tenderness of feeling ; and in style that gentle elaboration and 
that careful, high-bred English which contrasts so strikingly with the 
brusque, nervous manner now in fashion." — Beers. 

Another author who has appealed widely to lovers of 
the sentimental is Donald G. Mitchell, whose Reveries 
of a Bachelor and Dream Life, written under the pseu- 
Reveries of a donym " Ik Marvel," have retained their 

Bachelor. 1850. -. -, ... m, i i _e 

Dream Life. earl y popularity. They are books for 
1851, young men who are inclined to look at 

My Farm of J ° 

Edgewood. the future through a romantic haze. Thev 

Wet Days at " wear for me," says the author, " the illu- 

im! W00d ' sions and the fleeting, prismatic hues 

Dr. Johns— (& which bubbles always wear, and which 

novel) . 1866. J 

Old Story-Tell- youth is always used to blow and to fol- 
Engiish Lands, low with ea g er e y e till tn © iridescence be 
King™' 1895. g one and tne bubbles too." It seems to 
And others. be an assured fact that Mitchell will go 
down to posterity as the author of these two books, yet 
from a 'literary standpoint they are far below much of 



THE ESSAYISTS. 457 

his later work. They are full of youthful exuberance 
and an excess of color which is toned down in his 
Edgewood series and his later sketches. His style at 
its best is singularly easy and graceful. His delicate 
transitions from humor to pathos, his stingless satire, 
his manifest refinement, and his dreamy outlook upon 
life combine to give his style a rare charm. His latest 
work, English Lands, Letters, and Kings, is in many 
respects his best. Its graphic pictures and accurate 
characterizations bring a new charm to the old subject 
of English history. 

The author has resided for many years near New 
Haven, Connecticut, on the farm which he has made 
famous in his Edgewood series. 

Suggested Reading. — Reveries of a Bachelor; Wet Days at 
Edgewood. 

Charles Dudley Warner (b. 1829). 

" Warner is chiefly, one might almost say always, the essayist. 
His humor is not wit ; he pleases by the diffused light which illumi- 
nates his writings on various themes, not by any startling or sensational 
effect. American humor as displayed in his masterpiece, My Summer 
in a Garden, is shown in its better estate. Warner's intellectual kin- 
ship is with Irving, Curtis, and Holmes, not with Artemus Ward or 
Mark Twain." — Richardson. 

Charles Dudley Warner was born in Plainfield, 
Massachusetts, Sept. 12, 1829. A delightful glimpse 
of his boyhood days, as well as of the somewhat prim- 
itive and Puritanical New England of half a century 
ago, may be had in his Being a Bog, a book which, 
though written in the third person, is prevailingly auto- 



458 



AMERICAN LITERATURE. 



biographical. The background of the book is the little 
Massachusetts town of Charlemont, which was the scene 
of the author's life from his sixth to his 
fourteenth year. From Charlemont he re- 
moved to Cazenovia, New York, and in 
1851 he was graduated at Hamilton Col- 
lege. During the next nine years he was 
successively a surveyor on the Missouri 
frontier, a law student at the University 
of Pennsylvania, and a practising lawyer 
in Chicago. In 1860 he was invited by 
United States Senator Hawley, who had 
been attracted by several letters contrib- 
uted by Warner to The Hartford Press, of 
which he was the proprietor, to become the 
assistant editor of that paper. One year 
later, in the absence of his employer, who 
went to the front during the war, Warner 
became editor of The Press, and when, in 
1867, it was consolidated with The Hart- 
ford Courant, he was made co-editor with Hawley, a 
position which he has held to the present time. 

Warner's first significant book, My Summer in a Gar- 
den, was published in the columns of The Hartford Oou- 
rant in 1870. It appeared, indeed, during a period of 
notable beginnings. The three years from 1869 to 1872 
witnessed the publication of the first novel by W. D. 
Howells and of the first significant work by " H. H.," 
Mark Twain, Bret Harte, Joaquin Miller, Edward 
Eggleston, and John Burroughs. The earliest stars in 



Being a Boy. 
1867. 

My Summer in 
a Garden. 1870. 
Saunterings. 
1870. 

Back-log Stud- 
ies. 1872. 
Baddeck and 
that Sort of 
Thing. 1874. 
My Winter on 
the Nile. 1876. 
In the Levant. 
1877. 

In the Wilder- 
ness. 1878. 
Captain John 
Smith. 1881. 
Washington 
Irving. 1881. 
Their Pilgrim- 
age. 1886. 
On Horseback. 
1888. 

A Little Jour- 
ney in the 
World. 1889. 
The Golden 
House. 1895. 






THE ESSAYISTS. 459 

the bright constellation of the later writers were begin- 
ning to appear, and the reading public was eagerly scan- 
ning each new light, conjecturing if perchance it might 
not be a new planet. The reception of My Summer in 
a G-arden was most enthusiastic. The charming vein 
of humor that ran richly through the book caused its 
author to be classified at once with the humorists. But 
the careful reader soon discovered other and even more 
delightful features. The mellow atmosphere of the 
book, its graceful style and its rare finish, are worthy of 
Irving, or, indeed, of Charles Lamb. His next publica- 
tion, Saunterings, which consists of his letters written 
to The Courant during a visit to Europe, was followed 
by Back-log Studies, a work equal in merit to My Sum- 
mer in a Garden. With these two volumes Warner 
placed himself in the very front rank of American 
essayists. A delicate humor never too broad, an exqui- 
site fancy which hovers playfully about every figure and 
allusion, and withal a firmness of touch which gives 
constantly an air of finality of decision and unshaken 
confidence, are found on every page. 

Warner's next group of books, the notes of his travels 
at home and abroad, differ from his first essays only in 
the fact of their foreign background. My Winter on 
the Nile and In the Levant recall constantly the genial 
Howadji. Neither Warner nor Curtis wrote mere 
guide-book records of their Oriental journeys. For a 
simple itinerary, with names and dates and typical epi- 
sodes, one can go to the books of a score of minor East- 
ern travellers. In works like Nile Notes and My Winter 



460 AMERICAN LITERATURE. 

on the Nile we catch glimpses, not only of the actual 
Egypt of to-day, but of the land of the Nile, with its 
dreams of the past and its mellow atmosphere of ro- 
mance. In his journeys through his own laud Warner 
is still the essayist. He writes enthusiastically of the 
new South, of the magnificent promise of the great 
West, yet these sketches, humorous, finished, sparkling, 
are essays rather than books of travel. 

One more extended essay remains to be mentioned, — 
his sketch of the life of Irving. The subject was one 
for which he was peculiarly fitted. In Irving he found 
an author after his own heart, and he has portrayed the 
life of the genial Knickerbocker with rare sympathy 
and insight. 

Warner has of late years tried his hand at fiction, and 
with considerable success, but while his three novels, 
Their Pilgrimage, A Little Journey in the World, and 
The Golden House, show an increasing mastery of the 
novelist's art, they are not to be compared with his best 
work in the field which he has made peculiarly his own. 

Required Reading. — My Summer in a Garden ; Back-log 
Studies. 

John Burroughs (b. 1837). 

" Mr. Burroughs is above all the high priest of the farm. Country 
life, scenes, sounds, tastes, and smells are his great interest, and in 
writing of these he strikes a chord which no other prose writer, on this 
side of the Atlantic at least, has yet touched." 

One more important characteristic of the present 
period remains to be mentioned, — the rise and develop- 
ment of the so-called out-of-door school (p. 227). This 



THE ESSAYISTS. 461 

is, in reality, only a branch of the great school of writers 
of " literature of the soil " which has been the character- 
izing feature of the era since the war. The leader of 
the group has been, without question, John Burroughs, 
who, following the path indicated by Thoreau, has added 
a new interest to the study of nature. It is a hasty 
criticism, however, that classes Burroughs merely as a 
disciple of Thoreau. He received, without a doubt, his 
first inspiration from that great opener of blind eyes, 
but a close comparison of the writings of each will show 
few real points of similarity. In a sense Burroughs is a 
pioneer in his field. Thoreau has never been equalled 
as a minute observer of the phenomena of the woods 
and fields. His pictures move before the reader like a 
series of instantaneous photographs. He invites con- 
stantly to the trackless forest and to primeval condi- 
tions ; yet even when lost with him in the very heart 
of nature we never lose sight of Thoreau, the philoso- 
pher, the mystic, and the reformer. Burroughs has 
approached nature from a different standpoint. He has 
mingled the scientific with the poetic, and, while keep- 
ing the facts firmly in his grasp, he has humanized and 
idealized nature. Unlike Thoreau, he has kept himself 
in the background. He seldom moralizes; he is never 
mystical. He delights in the borderlands between .the 
wild and the civilized; in foot-paths, wild bees, birds 
that follow in the footsteps of man, apples, cows, fox- 
hounds, springs, trout streams, and wild berries. It 
pleases him to attribute to the denizens of the forest 
human motives and feelings, and to trace analogies even 






462 AMERICAN LITERATURE. 

between the animate and the inanimate. Yet, notwith- 
standing his playful fancy and his love of the poetic, his 
observations are all scientifically accurate and minutely 
faithful to nature. 

Often Burroughs leads us from the fields into his 
library and discourses charmingly of " Birds and Poets," 
of " True Realists," of Whitman, Carlyle, 
1871. Emerson, Matthew Arnold, and Thoreau. 

^Tinl^ Sun " His judgments are not always weighty, but 
Birds and they are invariably fresh and delightful. 

Locusts and In whatever field he enters, he opens new. 

Wild Honey. . 

Pepacton. VIStas. 

Fresh Fields. Burroughs resides in Esopus, in his na- 

SeaTom. tive State of New York. Since 1872 he 

indoor studies. i ias fo een an examiner of national banks, 

Riverby. 

but the duties of his profession are not 
exacting, and he finds abundant time for the studies 
that he loves. 

Required Reading. — Wake-Robin ; Birds and Poets ; Locusts 
and Wild Honey. 

THE LATER HISTORIANS. 

The great school of American historians led by Pres- 
cott and Motley has been succeeded by another almost 
as brilliant. Never has there been a time when history 
has been written more carefully or in greater quantity. 
The early history of America in all its phases and locali- 
ties has been studied with such extreme care that few 
unexplored fields remain for the historian. So high 
have the standards become in this department that a 



THE LATER HISTORIANS. 463 

history, to gain the attention of readers, must possess 
extraordinary merits. From the scores of really emi- 
nent historians of this later group only a few can be 
selected here for prominent mention. 



Justin Winsor (b. 1831). 

"The most thoroughly skilled of our scholars as a bibliographer 
and a cartographist." — George E. Ellis. 

The impersonation of the modern methods of dealing 
with history is Justin Winsor, the learned librarian of 
Harvard College. Taking as his field the 

t t . , /. Tv T . t A . i i Narrative and 

early history oi JNortn America, he has critical History 
ransacked all possible sources of material, % ea ™r™H a nd- 
and as a result his works are veritable book of the 

American 

mines of facts. He has spared no labor in Revolution. 

gathering old maps and charts and reports, Columbus. 

in preparing exhaustive bibliographies, and £ a e si n. lSSlSsippi 

in indicating sources of materials. In his Cartier to 

° Frontenac. 

last three works he has undertaken a com- 
prehensive and exhaustive series of histories describing 
the discovery and settlement of America. Not only 
are these works exceedingly rich in the materials for 
history, but they are philosophical and literary as well. 
They throw a new and somewhat startling light upon 
Columbus ; they show the great influence that the phys- 
ical geography of the continent has had upon its his- 
tory, and they picture with a firm hand the causes and 
the results of the Franco-English struggle in America. 
Dr. Winsor's style is precise and forcible, and his histo- 



464 AMERICAN LITERATURE. 

ries are valuable not only as works of reference, but as 
literary creations. 

John Fiske (b. 1842). 

John Fiske, a native of Hartford, Connecticut, and a 
graduate of Harvard University, has won a leading place 
both as a philosopher and a historian. His 
Myth-Makers, philosophical writings, since by Webster's 
Outlines of Cos- definition they do not belong strictly to 
mic Philosophy. the realm of literature, need not be con- 

Darwinism, and 

Other Essays, sidered here. They interpret the philoso- 

an Evolutionist, phy of Herbert Spencer, and their great 

The Destiny of va i ue [ s shown from the fact that so pro- 

AmeHcan Polit- found a thinker as Charles Darwin, after 

ical Ideas. , 

The Critical reading Outlines of Cosmic Philosophy, 
American His- wrote to the author, " I never in my life 
^'d • '• read so lucid an expositor, and therefore 

The Beginnings * 

Und eW Eng ~ tnmke r, as you are." 

The American Like Justin Winsor, Fiske has made a 

Revolution. . - . . . TT 

Civil Govern- specialty ol early American history. He, 
mated 'states. too > is engaged on a comprehensive his- 
The Discovery tory of the discovery and settlement of 

of America. ° J 

America, although from a somewhat dif- 
ferent standpoint from his fellow-historian. He has 
already published The Discovery of America, with 
Some Account of Ancient America and the Spanish 
Conquest, the first volume of the series and in many 
respects the best that has yet appeared; The Begin- 
nings of New England ; or, The Puritan Theocracy 
in its Relations to Civil and Religious Liberty ; The 



THE LATER HISTORIANS. 465 

American Revolution ; The Critical Period of American 
History, 1783-1789; and he is at present publishing 
the history of the settlement of Virginia. As a histo- 
rian Fiske is distinguished not only for his mastery of 
materials and his general accuracy, but for his philo- 
sophic insight, his breadth of view, and his lucid and 
brilliant literary style. He is a philosopher writing 
history ; he strives constantly to trace the great funda- 
mental principles which underlie the development of 
American civilization and national character. Yet his 
histories are not dry, lifeless arguments ; they are full 
of vivid pictures and they are interesting even to those 
who care little for their philosophy. 

During the greater part of Fiske's life he has been 
connected with Harvard University either as a student, 
lecturer, assistant librarian, or overseer. Since 1879 he 
has devoted himself almost entirely to lecturing and 
writing, making his home at Cambridge. 

Other Historians. — The American historian during 
all periods has devoted himself, with few exceptions, to 
American themes, and as a result the history of the 
United States during every period since the memorable 
voyage of Columbus has been . treated with great care. 
The labor expended by some of these historians has 
been marvellous. Herbert Howe Bancroft (b. 1832) has 
filled forty volumes with the history of the Pacific coast, 
while Henry Adams has filled nine volumes with the 
history of the administrations of Jefferson and Madison. 
Among the best known of the other later historians are 
Samuel Adams Drake (b. 1833), who has written enter- 

2h 



466 AMERICAN LITERATURE. 

tainingly of The Making of New England and The Mak- 
ing of the Great West; James Schouler (b. 1839), who 
has furnished, with his History of the United States from 
1783 to 1861, a valuable study of a most important 
period, and John Bach MacMaster (b. 1852), who is 
covering the same period with a History of the People of 
the United States, a work which promises in accuracy of 
statement and brilliancy of style to become the stand- 
ard history of the period. Among the literary histo- 
rians of the era only three merit special attention. 
E. C. Stedman has been already considered ; Charles 
Francis Richardson (b. 1851), with his scholarly and 
graceful survey of the American writers, has made 
himself the standard historian of our literature, while 
Moses Coit Tyler (b. 1835), with his more comprehen- 
sive work which covers as yet only the Colonial Era, 
has produced a history which, since within its limits it 
is exhaustive, is of the greatest value to the student of 
the colonial writers. 

Viewed from the standpoint of our recent historical 
product, the future of American history seems bright 
indeed. Other literary fields, however, seem to be 
lying in the shadow. " Just now," says Edgar Fawcett, 
" it is surely the twilight of our American novelists." 
There is a " twilight of the poets," says Stedman, " suc- 
ceeding to the brightness of their first diurnal course." 
But the dusk has not yet gathered about our historians. 
Who shall say that Stedman is not right, that the dark- 
ness over the rest of our literary firmament is not the 
sure promise of a new morning ? 






INDEX. 



INDEX. 



Abbott, Jacob F., 420. 

Adams, Charles Francis, 82. 

Adams, Henry (b. 1838), 16, 465. 

Adams, John, 69, 82. 

Adams, John Quincy, 82, 85. 

Adams, Samuel, 67, 68. 

Addison, D. L., 405. 

Alcott, Amos Bronson, 201, 208, 212, 

228, 229. 
/Alcott, Louisa M., 198, 229, 230. 
Aldrich, T. B., 365-375, 425. 
Alhambra, The, 122. 
Allston, Washington, 167, 257. 
Alsop, Richard, 98. 
Ames, Fisher, 88. 
Ames, Mary Clemmer, 404. 
Anthology Club, 209. 
Antislavery, 203, 324. 
Astor, John Jacob, 125, 166. 
Atlantic Monthly, 281, 291, 375, 387, 

397, 409, 412, 418, 426, 427, 429, 

433, 434. 
Austin, Jane G., 18, 415. 
Austin, G. L., 259, 326. 
Autobiographies, 59, 108, 148, 425. 

Ballad, The, 264, 340. 

Bancroft, George, 9, 16, 17, 196, 199, 

244, 266, 311-313, 344. 
Bancroft, H. H., 465. 
Barlow, Joel, 96, 97, 113, 151. 
Bartol, C. A., 220, 229. 
Bay Psalm Book, 27, 34, 45. 
Beecher, H. W., 330. 
Beecher, Lyman, 330. 
Beers, H. A. (b. 1847), 50, 90, 111, 

129, 429, 456. 



Bellows, H. W. (1814-1882), 204. 
Benton, T. H. (1782-1858) , 106. 
Berkeley, Sir William, 14. 
Bigelow, John (b. 1817), 54, 156, 

159. 
Bird, R. M., 150. 
Bishop, W. H. (b. 1847), 373. 
Blanchard, Edmund, 172. 
Boker, G. H., 351. 
Bolles, Frank, 227. 
Bowdoin College, 242, 260. 
Boyesen, H. H. (1848-1895), 449. 
Bradford, William, 17, 29. 
Bradstreet, Anne, 35. 
Brainerd, J. G. C, 170. 
Briggs, Charles F., 172. 
Brook Farm, 200. 
Brooks, C. T., 204. 
Brooks, Maria G., 170. 
Brown, E. E., 274, 288. 
Brown, Charles B., 101, 103-105, 111, 

134. 
Brown, S. G., 188. 
Brown, John, 324, 348. 
Brown University, 24. 
Browne, C. F. (" Artemus Ward"), 

449-451. 
Brownell, H. H., 346. 
Brownson, O. A. (1803-1876), 229. 
Bryant, 74, 113, 115, 116, 148, 154, 

155-163. 
Buckminster, J. S., 36, 207. 
Bunner, H. C, 375. 
Burdett, R. J., 454. 
Burroughs, John, 218, 221, 223, 341, 

376, 381, 458, 460-462. 
Butterworth, Hezekiah, 68, 195, 259. 



469 



470 



INDEX. 



Cable, G. W., 437-439. 
Cabot, J. E., 208, 217. 
Calhoun, John C, 187, 191, 192. 
California, 391. 
Cambridge, Mass., 257. 
Carey, Edward, 327. 
Carlton, Will, 394. 
Carlyle-Emerson Correspondence, 

186, 211. 
Carter, Robert (1819-1879), 203, 290. 
Cary, Alice, 403, 404. 
Cary, Phoebe (1824-1871), 403. 
Catherwood, Mary H., 421. 
Century Magazine, 375, 393, 437, 455. 
Chadwick, John W. (b. 1840), 236, 

287. 
Chalmers, George, 75. 
Chamberlain, Mellin, 185. 
Channing, William Ellery, 4, 36, 199, 

202, 204-207, 259. 
Channing, William Ellery, 2d, 221, 

235. 
Channing, William Henry, 201, 202, 

204, 229, 230, 235, 276. 
Cheatham, James, 75. 
Cheney, Edna D., 230. 
Child, Mrs., 18, 74, 195, 336, 420. 
Choate, Rufus, 188, 189, 241. 
Church, Benjamin (1734-1776), 154. 
Clark, W. M., 376. 
Clarke, James Freeman, 202, 207, 

229, 230, 276. 
Clay, Henry, 187, 190, 327. 
Clemens, Samuel L. ("Mark 

Twain "), 425, 451-454, 458. 
Clifton, William, 154. 
Cobbett, William, 75. 
Colton, Calvin (1788-1857), 190. 
Concord, Mass., 202, 209, 221. 
Constitution of the United States, 78. 
Conway, Moncure D. (b. 1832), 75, 

208. 
Cooke, G. W., 208. 
Cooke, John Esten (1830-1886), 11, 

16, 83. 
Cooke, Rose Terry, 415. 
Cooper, James Fenimore, 74, 104, 

128, 134, 135-147, 195. 
Cooper, Susan Fenimore, 145. 
Cotton, John, 46. 



Cox, Daniel, 63. 

"Craddock, C. E." (see Miss Mur- 

f ree) . 
Cranch, C. P., 195, 202, 236. 
Crawford, F. M., 443-445. 
Curtis, George T. (b. 1812), 132, 184. 
Curtis, George W., 117, 126, 156, 200, 

204, 208, 236-239, 314, 459. 

Dana, C. A., 200, 234, 236. 

Dana, R. H., Ill, 168. 

Dana, R. H., Jr., 152, 169, 192. 

Dartmouth College, 24, 185, 188, 277. 

Davis, Jefferson (1808-1889), 348. 

Davis, Rebecca H., 421. 

Dawes, Anna L., 328. 

Deland, Margaret, 421. 

Dennie, John, 111. 

Dewey, Mary E., 147. 

Dewey, Orville, 207. 

Dial, The, 202, 228, 232, 405. 

Drake, J. R., 163-165. 

Drake, S. A., 17, 108, 195, 466. 

Draper, J. W. (1811-1882), 348. 

Dunlap, William (1766-1839), 103. 

Duyckink, E. A. (1816-1878), 98, 114, 

195. 
Dwight, Sereno, 49, 95. 
Dwight, Theodore, 98. 
Dwight, Timothy, 91, 95, 96, 111, 154, 

196. 

Eastburn, James W. (1797-1819), 336. 
Edwards, Jonathan, 25, 48-51. 
Eggleston, Edward (435-437), 16, 392, 

458. 
Eggleston, George C. (b. 1839), 92. 
Eliot, John, 27, 33. 
Ellis, George E. (b. 1815), 269, 305. 
Emerson, Edward W., 208. 
Emerson, R. W., 74, 192, 195, 196, 

200, 201, 202, 205, 206, 208-220, 

226, 230, 324, 347, 462. 
Everett, Alexander, 72, 119. 
Everett, Edward, 51, 124, 184, 191, 

192-194, 199, 238, 257. 

Fawcett, Edgar, 375, 466. 
Felton, C. C. (1807-1862), 258. 
Field, Eugene, 394. 



INDEX. 



471 



Fields, James T. (1816-1881), 240. 
Fields, Mrs. James T. (b. 1834), 408. 
Finch, F. M. (b. 1827). 346. 
Fisher, George P. (b. 1827), 8, 9. 
Fiske, John, 10, 17, 51, 66, 77, 78, 87, 

464, 465. 
Follen, Charles (1796-1840), 229. 
Foote, Mary H., 418. 
Ford, Paul L., 54, 78. 
Foster, Stephen C, 391. 
Franklin, Benjamin, 25, 39, 43, 53- 

61, 63, 75, 80. 
French, Alice ("Octave Thanet"), 

418. 
Freneau, Philip, 98-101, 111, 154. 
Frothingham, O. B. (1822-1895), 66, 

198, 200, 234, 235. 
Fuller, Margaret, 195, 196, 200, 202, 

212, 230-234, 247. 

Garrison, W. L., 325, 326. 

Gay, Sidney H. (1814-1888), 85. 

Gilder, R. W., 375. 

Gill, W. F., 172. 

Godfrey, Thomas, 54. 

Godwin, Parke (b. 1816), 156, 158. 

Goodrich, S. C. ("Peter Parley"), 

(1793-1860), 93, 94, 95, 129, 251. 
Gould, R. A., 33. 
Grant, U. S. (1822-1885), 348. 
Greeley, Horace (1811-1872) , 138, 230, 

231, 233, 348, 353. 
Green, Joseph (1706-1780), 154. 
Grimke, A. H., 325, 328. 
Griswold, R. W. (1815-1857) ,• 172, 

349, 353. 
Guernsey, A. H. (b. 1825), 208. 

" H. H." (see Helen Hunt Jackson). 
Hale, Edward Everett, 54, 425, 432, 

433. 
Halleck, Fitz-Greene, 163, 165, 167. 
Hamilton, Alexander, 86-88. 
Hamilton, John C, 86. 
Hampden-Sidney College, 24. 
Hannay, James, 172. 
Hardy, Arthur Sherburne, 447. 
Harper's Magazine, 238. 
Harris, Joel Chandler, 439. 
Harte, F. B., 395-400, 436, 458. 



Harvard University, 23, 37, 69, 70, 
167, 193, 197, 204, 209, 222, 259, 
276, 280, 290, 306, 311, 314, 318, 326, 
463, 465. 

Haweis, H. R., 451. 

Hawthorne, Julian, 230, 240, 255, 447. 

Hawthorne, Nathaniel, 26, 31, 32, 34, 
45, 47, 48, 67, 101, 102, 177, 180, 196, 

200, 212, 240-256, 367, 447. 
Hay, John, 349. 

Hayne, Paul H., 386-388. 

Hayne, Robert G., 186, 388. 

Hedge, F. H. (1805-1890), 199, 258. 

Henry, Patrick, 71-73. 

Higginson, T. W., 103, 217, 230, 255. 

Hildreth, Richard, 9, 196, 305. 

Hill, D. J., 113, 156. 

Hillard, G. S. (1808-1879), 16, 194, 

256. 
Holland, J. G., 454-456. 
Holmes, Abiel (1763-1837) , 275. 
Holmes, O. W., 31, 50, 74, 195, 196, 

201, 203, 213, 218, 274-287, 314, 344, 
448. 

Honeywood,St. John (1763-1798), 154. 
Hopkins, Lemuel (1750-1801) , 98, 154. 
Hopkins, Samuel (1721-1803), 49. 
Hopkinson, Francis (1738-1791) , 154. 
Hopkinson, Joseph (1770-1842), 93. 
Hosmer, J. K. (b. 1834), 51, 67. 
Howard, Blanche W., 421. 
Howe, Julia Ward, 231. 
Howells, W. D., 392, 425-428, 445, 

449, 458. 
Humor, American, 448. 
Humphreys, David (1752-1818), 98, 

154. 
Hutchinson, Gov. Thomas, 51, 52. 

Immigration, 107. 

Independent, The, 416, 436. 

Ingram, John, 172. 

Inventions, 109. 

Irving, Pierre M. (1803-1874), 113, 

125. 
Irving, Washington, 81, 108, 112-127, 

155, 167, 262, 448. 
Irving, William (1766-1821), 114. 

Jackson, Helen Hunt, 405-408, 458. 



472 



INDEX. 



James, Henry, 240, 429-432. 

James, Henry, Sr. (1811-1882), 429. 

Jay, John, 88. 

Jefferson, Thomas, 83-85. 

Jenkins, J. S., 191. 

Jewett, Sarah O., 415, 416, 417. 

Johns Hopkins University Studies, 

10, 68, 106, 200. 
Johnson, Oliver (1809-1889), 325. 
Juveniles, 251, 420. 

Kennedy, John P., 74, 149, 150, 175. 

Kennedy, W. S., 259, 274, 334. 

Key, Francis Scott, 171. 

King, Capt. Charles, 447. 

King, Thomas Starr (1824-1864), 

342. 
King's College, 24. 
Kittredge, Walter, 347. 
Knickerbocker History of New York, 

111, 115, 116, 448. 
Knowles, J. O., 33. 

Lanier, Sidney, 389-391. 
Lanman, Charles (b. 1819), 184. 
Larcom, Lucy, 404. 
Lathrop, G. P. (b. 1851) , 240. 
Lawrence, Eugene (1823-1894), 83, 

142. 
Lazarus, Emma, 411. 
Leather-Stocking Tales, 141. 
Leggett, William (1802-1840) , 148. 
Leland, C. G.,352. 
Liberator, The, 325. 
Lincoln, A., 259, 278, 297, 347, 348, 

393. 
Linton, William J, (b. 1812), 334. 
Livermore, T. S., 135. 
Locke, David Ross, 254. 
Lodge, H. C. (b. 1850), 9, 45, 86, 184. 
Longfellow, H. W., 18, 31, 48, 74, 

127, 259-273. 
Longfellow, Samuel, 259. 
Loring, G. B., 240. 
Lossing, B. J. (1813-1891), 66, 118, 

348. 
Lounsbury, T.R. (b. 1838) ,135, 140, 141. 
Lowell, J. P., 10, 37, 81, 110, 127, 132, 

138, 145, 172, 195, 204, 220, 221, 224, 

240, 259, 288-301, 347, 368, 448. 



Lyric Poetry, 371. 

MacMaster, J. B., 55, 72, 78, 466. 

Madison, James, 85, 99. 

Manse, The Old, 209, 211, 212, 244. 

Marshall, John (1755-1835), 81, 86. 

Martyn, Charles, 326. 

"Marvel, Ik" (see D. G. Mitchell). 

Marvin, A. P., 45. 

Mather, Cotton, 45-48. 

Mather, Increase (1639-1723), 45. 

Mather, Richard (1596-1669) , 27, 45. 

Mather, Samuel (1706-1785), 45. 

Matthews, James Brander (b. 1852), 

135, 146. 
Melville, Herman, 152, 153. 
Miller, Joaquin, 400, 401, 458. 
Miller, Olive Thorne, 227. 
Mitchell, D. G., 456, 457. 
Monroe, James, 88, 107. 
Moore, Frank, 66, 92. 
Morris, G. P., 130, 171. 
Morris, Gouverneur, 88. 
Morse, J. T., Jr. (b. 1840), 54, 83, 86, 

274. 
Morse, James H. (b. 1841), 400. 
Morton, Nathaniel, 32. 
Morton, Thomas, 31. 
Motley, J. L., 32, 249, 313, 314-318, 

326. 
Moulton, Louise C, 421. 
Mudge, Q. A. (1813-1888), 33. 
Murfree, Mary N., 418-420. 

" Nasby, Petroleum V." (see D. R. 

Locke) . 
Neal, John, 148, 149. 
Neilson, Joseph, 188. 
Newspaper, The, 43. 
Nicolay, J. G., 349, 393. 
Norton, Andrews, 207. 
Norton, Charles Eliot (b. 1827), 208, 

288, 291. 
Nye, Edgar W. (b. 1850), 454. 

O'Brien, Fitz-James, 442. 

Ohio Valley, 391. 

Otis, James, 68-70. 

Our Young Folks, 404, 434. 

Page, Thomas Nelson, 439-441. 



INDEX. 



473 



Paine, Robert Treat (1773-1811), 93, 

154. 
Paine, Thomas, 63, 75-77. 
Palfrey, John G., 17, 21, 305, 336, 339. 
Parker, Theodore, 198, 201, 202, 207, 

235, 324. 
Parkman, Francis, 40, 108, 318-323, 

333. 
Parsons, T. W., 301. 
Parton, James (1822-1891), 54, 58, 

83, 131, 133, 138, 190, 231. 
Paulding, James K., 108, 114, 127- 

129, 148, 149. 
Paulding, "William Irving, 127. 
Payne, John Howard, 171. 
Peabody, Elizabeth P. (b. 1804), 229. 
Peabody, W. B. O. (1799-1847), 45. 
Penn, William, 63. 
Pennsylvania, 38, 53, 84, 352, 358. 
Percival, James G., 170. 
Perry, Nora, 411. 
Phelps, Elizabeth Stuart, 413^16. 
Phillips, Wendell, 203, 239, 326-328. 
Physical Geography, 12, 21, 463. 
Piatt, John J., 392, 426. 
Piatt, Sarah Morgan, 411. 
Pickard, S. T., 334. 
Pierce, Benjamin, 241, 276. 
Pierce, E. L., 328. 
Pierce, Franklin, 243. 
Pierpont, John, 168. 
Pike, Albert (1809-1891), 347. 
Poe, Edgar A., 101, 132, 148, 150, 165, 

172-182, 195. 
Pollard, E. A. (1828-1872), 348. 
Prescott, William H., 102, 103, 122, 

147, 150, 204, 241, 306-310. 
Preston, Margaret J., 386, 410. 
Princeton University, 23, 50, 99. 

Quincy, Edmund, 71. 
Quincy, Josiah, 70, 83. 
Quincy, Josiah, 2d, 70. 

Randall, H. S., 83. 

Randall, James R. (b. 1839), 347. 

Randolph, John, 328 

Randolph, T. J., 83. 

Read, T. B., 346, 351. 

Realism, 424. 



Richardson, C. F., 4, 33, 48, 163, 268, 

346, 405, 432, 455, 457, 466. 
Riley, James W., 394. 
Ripley, George, 200, 202, 234, 258. 
Rives, William C. (1793-1868), 85. 
Robbins, Royall (1787-1861), 171. 
Robertson, E. S., 259. 
Roe, E. P., 442, 443. 
Romance, 101, 179, 250. 
Roosevelt, Theodore (b. 1858), 108. 
Root, G. F. (1820-1895), 346. 
Rowson, Susanna (1761-1824), 147. 
Russell, Irwin, 391. 
Rutgers College, 24. 

Sanborn, F. B. (b. 1831), 220. 
Sands, Robert C. (1799-1832), 148. 
Salem, Mass., 241, 306. 
Sargent, Epes (1812-1880), 190. 
Schoolcraft,HenryR.(1793-1864),268. 
Schouler, James, 466. 
Schurz, Carl (b. 1829), 190. 
Scribner's Monthly, 437, 446. 
Scudder, Horace E. (b. 1838), 81, 272, 

352. 
Sedgwick, Catherine M., 147, 148. 
Sewall, Jonathan M. (1748-1808), 92. 
Sewall, Samuel, 44. 
Seward, William Henry (1801-1872) , 

83. 
Shaw, Henry (" Josh Billings "), 454. 
Sheridan, P. S., 349. 
Sherman, W. T., 348. 
Short Story, The, 179, 423, 428. 
Sigourney, Lydia H., 169. 
Simms, W. G., 16, 76, 151, 152, 386. 
Sketch Book, The, 117. 
Smith, Capt. John, 16, 17. 
Smith, Seba (1792-1868) , 454. 
Smith, S. F. (1808-1895), 276. 
Sonnet, The, 236, 373, 388, 407. 
South, The, 13, 385. 
Spanish Themes, 119, 393. 
Sparks, Jared, 54, 81, 170, 194, 196, 

205, 305, 319. 
Spofford, Harriet E., 412. 
Sprague, Charles, 169. 
Sprague, W. B., 95. 
Springfield Republican, The, 455. 
Standish, Miles, 32. 



474 



INDEX. 



Stedman, E. C, 90, 259, 288, 333, 351, 

359, 360, 364-369, 390, 392, 395, 400, 

422, 466. 
Stephens, Alexander H. (1812-1883), 

348. 
Stevenson, C. J., 103. 
Stith, William (1689-1785), 12. 
Stockton, Frank E., 445, 446. 
Stoddard, Elizabeth Barstow (b. 

1823), 362. 
Stoddard, R. H., 110, 156, 172, 173, 

178, 240, 242, 259, 342, 351, 357, 

360-364. 
Story, Joseph (1779-1817), 5, 302. 
Story, W. W., 302. 
Stowe, Calvin E. (1802-1886), 330. 
Jr- Stowe, Harriet B., 203, 330-333, 415, 
* 452. 

Sumner, Charles, 203, 326, 328-330. 
Symington, A. J., 156. 

/ Taylor, Bayard, 151, 161, 163, 166, 

230, 351-360, 395. 
Taylor, Marie H., 352. 
Tenney, Tabitha (1762-1837) , 147. 
Thaxter, Celia, 408. 
Thomas, Edith, 411. 
Thompson, Daniel P. (1795-1868) , 74. 
Thompson, Maurice (b. 1844), 227. 
Thoreau, H. D., 221-227, 408, 461, 

462. 
Ticknor, George (1791-1871), 262, 

305, 306. 
Timrod, Henry, 387. 
Todd, Charles B., 96. 
Torrey, Bradford (b. 1843), 227. 
Tourgee, Albion W., 408. 
Transcendental Club, 228. 
Transcendentalism, 198-200, 201. 
Trent, W. P., 151. 
Trowbridge, J. T., 434, 435. 
Trumbull, Jonathan, 93, 94, 111, 154. 
Tucker, George (1775-1861), 83. 
Tuckerman, H. T. (1813-1871), 131, 

149, 274. 
Tudor, William (1779-1850), 69. 
" Twain, Mark " (see S. L. Clemens) . 
Twitchell, J. H., 30. 
Tyler, Moses Coit, 5, 28, 48, 72, 93, 

96, 466. 



Uncle Tom's Cabin, 330, 337, 408. 
Underwood, Francis H. (1825-1894) , 

75, 82, 129, 193, 206, 259, 288, 300, 

314, 334. 
Unitarianism, 197. 
University of Pennsylvania, 23. 

Vedder, Henry C, 423, 444, 453. 
Verplanck, Gulian C. (1786-1870), 

195. 
Vers de Societe, 372. 
Very, Jones, 236, 241. 
Virginia, 10. 
Von Hoist, H., 191. 

Wallace, Lew, 447. 

Ward, Mrs. H. D. (see Elizabeth 

Stuart Pbelps). 
"Ward, Artemus " (see Browne, C. 

F.). 
Ward, W. H. (b. 1835), 389, 416. 
Ware, Henry, 207. 
Ware, Henry, Jr., 207, 209. 
Warner, C. D., 16, 113, 266, 425, 452, 

457-460. 
Washington, George, 79, 81, 82. 
Webster, Daniel, 85, 184-188. 
Webster, Fletcher, 184. 
Webster, Noah (1758-1843), 1. 
Wells, W. V., 67. 
Wendell, Barrett, 45. 
West, C. N., 389. 
West, The, 391. 
Whipple, E. P. (1819-1886), 4, 148, 

253, 299, 308, 317. 
White, Greenough, 45, 99, 172. 
Whitman, Sarah H. (1803-1878), 

172. 
Whitman, Walt, 108, 351, 376-384, 

462. 
Whitney, Adeline D. T., 420. 
Whittaker, Alexander, 15. 
Whittier, J. G., 31, 45, 48, 171, 196, 

272, 333-344, 353, 404. 
Wigglesworth, Michael, 36. 
Wilde, Richard H. (1789-1847), 171. 
Wilkins, Mary E., 415. 
William and Mary, College of, 23. 
Williams College, 157. 
Williams, Roger, 19, 33, 240, 



INDEX. 



475 



Willis, N. P., 129-133, 172, 175, 181, 

195, 353. 
Wilson, Forseyth, 346. 
Wilson, Henry (1812-1875), 348. 
Wilson, James Grant (b. 1832), 156, 

163, 165. 
Winslow, Edward, 17. 
Winsor, Justin, 66, 463, 464. 
Winter, William (b. 1836), 189, 236. 
Winthrop, Jobn, 24, 30, 31, 442. 
Wiuthrop, Robert C, 30, 149. 
Winthrop, Theodore, 74, 442. 
Wirt, William (1772-1834), 71. 



Witchcraft Delusion, 42, 44, 46. 
Woodberry, George E. (b. 1855), 172, 

177, 288. 
Woodbury, C. J., 220. 
Woodworth, Samuel, 171. 
Woolson, Constance F. (1848-1894). 
Worcester, Joseph (1784-1865), 242. 

Yale University, 23, 50, 94, 95, 96, 

97, 130, 136, 168. 
Young, C. A. (b. 1834), 274. 
Youth's Companion, 133. 



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